What the courts have found

Shown to the jury at the KGM trial: a message from the end of 2015 in which Mark Zuckerberg said he hoped to achieve a 12% increase in time spent on Meta’s apps over three years. He accepted it may once have been his aim.

NPR (Bobby Allyn, 18 February 2026) wrote: “One 2018 internal Meta document stated ‘If we wanna win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens,’ Lanier pointed out, saying that contradicted Meta’s stated policies.” Mark Lanier is the claimant’s lawyer. This is NPR’s account of trial evidence; we have not seen the exhibit or a transcript.

The brief quotes: “Tweens and young teens are Facebook’s best opportunity to win future generations of people” (Exhibit 315); “Tweens (approximately age 10 to 12) are special. People who join[] Facebook as tweens have the highest long-term retention out of all age groups” (Exhibit 313); and “We have definitively established tweens as the highest retention age group in the United States” (Exhibit 316). One employee reacted: “oh good, we’re going after <13 year olds now? [Z]uck has been talking about that for awhile ... targetting [sic] 11 year olds feels like tobacco companies a couple decades ago (and today). Like we’re seriously saying ‘we have to hook them young’ here” (Exhibit 299). These are quotations in a plaintiffs’ filing, not findings of a court.

An internal Meta document (Exhibit 192 in the plaintiffs’ brief of 21 November 2025) states: “there were 4M people under 13 in 2015 on IG”, which “represents around 30% of all 10-12 years [sic] old in the US”. Another (Exhibit 193) records that “45[%] of children 9-12 say they use Facebook daily” while “40 percent use Instagram”.

NPR (Bobby Allyn, 18 February 2026) reported from the K.G.M. trial that plaintiff’s lawyer Mark Lanier “directed Zuckerberg’s attention to a 2020 internal Meta document showing that 11-year-olds were four times as likely to keep coming back to its apps, compared to older users.” This is NPR’s account of trial evidence; we have not seen the exhibit or a transcript.

The plaintiffs’ brief of 21 November 2025 quotes an internal document (Exhibit 157) outlining targets for Instagram of “40 minutes per DAU * 1.5B DAU” in 2023, growing to “46 minutes per DAU * 1.95B DAU” in 2026. Zuckerberg told the K.G.M. jury these were milestones, not goals.

Slides leaked by Frances Haugen and reported in September 2021 said: “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls.” In separate leaked research, 13.5% of UK teenage girls said Instagram made suicidal thoughts worse.

An internal Meta document (Exhibit 366) describes consulting “18 experts” and says “A large majority, including individuals in the AR field, recommended prohibiting these filters, citing known impacts to body image and mental health”. The brief says Meta temporarily banned cosmetic surgery filters in October 2019 and lifted the ban in May 2020, when Mark Zuckerberg directed product teams to “allow people to create and share face-altering effects on Instagram” but “not allow these effects to be discovered or promoted in our Effects Gallery” (Exhibit 372). A key consideration was “competitiveness/growth”, with a “negative growth impact, simply because any restriction is likely to reduce engagement if people go elsewhere” (Exhibit 371). A senior executive emailed Zuckerberg: “I respect your call on this and I’ll support it, but want to just say for the record that I don’t think it’s the right call given the risks. As a parent of two teenage girls – one of whom has been hospitalized twice in part for body dysmorphia – I can tell you the pressure on them and their peers coming through social media is intense with respect to body image” (Exhibit 374). The Massachusetts Attorney General’s complaint (paragraphs 227 to 237) attributes those same words to Margaret Gould Stewart, Meta’s VP of Product Design, and quotes other emails: Stewart asked in November 2019 to “disallow effects that mimic plastic surgery”; Karina Newton, Instagram’s Head of Policy, wrote of “nearly 20 outside experts and academics” who were “nearly unanimous on the harm here”; a pre-read for Zuckerberg cited “21 independent experts”; and on 1 April 2020 Zuckerberg vetoed the ban by email, saying there was “clear demand” and that he had seen “no data” of harm. These are allegations in court filings, which Meta disputes. At the K.G.M. trial Zuckerberg testified that a ban felt “paternalistic” and “overbearing”, and Meta stopped creating or recommending the filters itself but left them available.

A Meta survey of 1,000 teenagers and their parents, run with the University of Chicago, concluded that parental and household factors have little association with teenagers’ reported levels of attentiveness. Mosseri told the jury he could not recall the study and that its findings were not published. Meta says the study was narrow and did not examine parental oversight.

The brief quotes one researcher’s message: “oh my gosh yall IG is a drug... We’re basically pushers... We are causing Reward Deficit Disorder bc people are binging on IG so much they can’t feel reward anymore”. The same message says: “I know Adam [Mosseri] doesn’t want to hear it – he freaked out when I talked about dopamine in my teen fundamentals leads review but its undeniable!” This is a quotation of an internal document in a plaintiffs’ filing, not a finding of a court, and Meta disputes how such material is characterised.

NPR, reporting on the complaint after its redactions failed, wrote: “TikTok determined the precise amount of viewing it takes for someone to form a habit: 260 videos.” The complaint itself states that “in under 35 minutes, an average user is likely to become addicted”. That conclusion is the State’s, not TikTok’s. TikTok disputes the complaint.

Senator Richard Blumenthal said to Mosseri: “Instagram is addictive.” Mosseri answered: “Senator, respectfully, I don’t believe the research suggests that our products are addictive. Research actually shows that on 11 of 12 difficult issues that teens face, teens that are struggling said Instagram helps for their harms.” Senator Amy Klobuchar asked whether someone in his company said it was an existential threat if Instagram lost teen users. Mosseri answered: “Senator, I assume that is true.” This is testimony, not a court finding. A copy of the transcript is on our source documents page.

Zuckerberg’s own written testimony states: “Mental health is a complex issue, and the existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link between using social media and young people having worse mental health outcomes.” At the hearing, CBS News (Kerry Breen) reported that he turned to the families in the room and said: “I’m sorry for everything you have all been through. No one should go through the things that your families have suffered.” This is testimony and press reporting, not a court finding. A copy of the written testimony is on our source documents page.

The BBC reported that Zuckerberg told the jury: “You’re mischaracterising what I’m saying. I’m not surprised that people internally were studying this.” It reported that he noted teen users represented “less than 1%” of ad revenue, that in a 2015 email he told executives his goals for the year included seeing “time spent increase by 12%”, and that he said “at an earlier point in the company” he gave executives goals to increase time spent but “insisted that was no longer how the company operated”. This is the BBC’s account of testimony given in court; we have not seen the transcript.