Meta questions psychologist’s testimony in teen mental health harms trial

A social psychologist testified for nearly four hours in the trial pitting California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey against Meta, telling jurors that daily social media use likely causes depression, self-harm and suicide in teens, with effects concentrated among girls aged 10 to 17.

Meta's attorney countered by picking apart the causation claims, noting the research didn't isolate specific apps from general tech use and even inverted some statistics to argue that a given unhappiness rate implied a much larger contented majority. A former Meta data scientist also testified that a teen well-being tool never gained traction internally, yet he was told to publicize it as improving anyway.

The case, the first of over 3,000 in the multidistrict litigation, could expose Meta to penalties up to $200 billion and force changes to how it manages teen accounts. Zuckerberg and Instagram's Adam Mosseri are expected to testify in the six-to-eight-week trial.

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