Four US states take Meta to federal trial in Oakland over youth social media addiction

Opening arguments in Oakland

A federal trial against Meta Platforms began in Oakland, California, on 18 August 2026 before US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. The lawsuit, presented by the attorneys general of California, Kentucky, Colorado, and New Jersey, is part of a 2023 legal initiative initially joined by 29 states. California Deputy Attorney General Megan O'Neill argued in her opening statement that Meta engineered Instagram and Facebook to foster compulsive use among minors, exploiting adolescent neurobiology to maximize time on the apps and harvest personal data. Meta defense attorney Paul Schmidt countered that employees introduced protective measures while balancing safety with user expression, noting that Meta removed 600,000 accounts belonging to children under 13 over the past three months.

Whistleblower testimony and platform mechanisms

The plaintiffs called former Facebook employee Arturo Béjar as their first witness. Béjar, who left the company in 2015 and returned in 2019 as an external consultant after his 14-year-old daughter received unsolicited sexual messages and photos of genitalia on Instagram, described warnings he presented to corporate leadership. He testified that internal assessments indicated young users saw harmful material between 100 and 400 times more often than Meta public metrics reflected. The trial is scheduled to last between six and eight weeks, with the eight-member jury serving in an advisory capacity while Judge Gonzalez Rogers decides the outcome. Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and other corporate officers are scheduled to testify during the proceedings.

Disputed damages and financial exposure

Financial liabilities under consideration in the lawsuit remain sharply contested between the parties. In pretrial submissions, Meta asserted that statutory penalties could reach 1.4 trillion dollars, representing an amount that exceeds twenty times its annual net profit and rivals its total market valuation. Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman characterized the action as the largest consumer protection lawsuit in American history, asserting that Meta concealed product hazards because inaction remained profitable. California Attorney General Rob Bonta clarified that the multi-trillion figure was Meta's own projection rather than the states' demand, with plaintiffs calculating potential statutory penalties between 193 billion and 200 billion dollars.

We are not asking for 1.4 trillion dollars.

Prior court verdicts and requested remedies

The Oakland proceedings follow recent adverse judgments against Meta in related youth safety litigation. In New Mexico, a state court ordered Meta to pay 942 million dollars and required platform adjustments, including a mandatory 90-hour monthly screen time cap for users under 18 years old. In March 2026, a Los Angeles jury awarded 4.2 million dollars after finding Meta and Google subsidiary YouTube negligent in warning users about addiction risks. Meta has announced plans to appeal both rulings. In the Oakland case, the four states are seeking structural remedies that include mandatory parental consent for data collection from users under 13, restrictions on algorithmic recommendation feeds, curbs on automatic scrolling, and modified notification systems.