Opening arguments in the federal child safety trial against Meta Platforms began Tuesday in Oakland, California, with attorneys representing four states accusing the company of deliberately engineering its social media platforms to trap young users and then concealing what it knew about the consequences.
California Deputy Attorney General Megan O'Neill framed Meta's conduct around four words in her opening statement: hook, hold, harvest and hide. She told the court that Meta's business model depended on drawing in users — particularly children — keeping them on the platform as long as possible, extracting their personal data and misrepresenting the risks when speaking publicly.
"It was especially bad for kids," O'Neill said.
The four states bringing the case — California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey — allege that Instagram and Facebook were built with features designed to produce compulsive use in minors. The states point specifically to the infinite scroll format, photo filters and the "like" button as design choices that kept young users engaged in ways harmful to their mental health. Their theory of liability rests on product design, not content: they are not arguing Meta should be held responsible for what users posted but for how the platforms themselves were engineered.
That distinction matters legally. Social media companies have long relied on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields platforms from liability for third-party content, and on First Amendment protections, to deflect lawsuits. The states' design-focused approach is a deliberate attempt to get around both. If the platforms were built to be harmful regardless of what anyone posted, the argument goes, those legal shields do not apply.
The states also allege Meta violated the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, known as COPPA, by collecting personal data on users under the age of 13 without obtaining parental consent.
The potential financial exposure for Meta is steep. Early estimates place possible penalties as high as $1.4 trillion — a figure that roughly matches the full market value of Meta's equity on the Nasdaq. Some legal scholars have drawn comparisons to the tobacco litigation of the 1990s, when state attorneys general extracted massive settlements and permanently altered both corporate behavior and public understanding of cigarettes' dangers. Meta's shares fell 4.4 percent Tuesday, closing at $543.67.
Meta denied the states' allegations and said it will present its own opening arguments. In a written statement, the company called the states' claims unsubstantiated and pointed to teen-focused protections it said it has already built into its platforms, including enhanced privacy settings and a one-hour daily timer on Instagram designed to prompt younger users to close the app.
The states' case relies heavily on internal Meta communications and company-commissioned studies that O'Neill previewed in her opening. The source of that evidence — documents Meta produced internally — is central to the states' argument that the company knew about the risks and chose not to act or to be straight with the public.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta is co-leading the case. The trial is unfolding in Oakland's federal courthouse, where a line of spectators formed outside before the doors opened Tuesday morning.
The litigation is part of a broader wave of legal action against social media platforms over youth mental health. What sets this Oakland trial apart is its scope — four attorneys general, a single coordinated case and a potential penalty figure that would dwarf any prior settlement in the industry's history. Whether the states can prove that specific design features caused measurable mental health harm to minors, and that Meta concealed that knowledge, will determine whether any of that $1.4 trillion exposure becomes real. Meta's defense team had not yet made its opening arguments as of Tuesday; their account of the facts will follow in court.
