A landmark trial opened in Nashville, Tennessee on Monday, with state lawyers telling a jury that Meta — the company behind Instagram and Facebook — knowingly disregarded internal research showing that its platform caused serious harm to teenage users, including eating disorders, depression and self-harm. The seven-week trial in state court, brought by Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti's office, could result in substantial financial penalties and a court order requiring Instagram to alter features the state deems dangerous to young people's mental health.
During opening statements, Tennessee lawyer Tom Cartmell drew jurors' attention to an internal Meta document from 2017 in which the company's own product managers wrote that features such as notifications and infinite scroll "are inherently at odds with well-being" and called for a public warning. To drive the point home, Cartmell played the familiar ping of a smartphone notification in the courtroom, explaining that unpredictable rewards of this kind trigger dopamine responses that promote addictive behaviour — with a particularly powerful effect on adolescent brains. "This warning never came," Cartmell told the jury. The state argues that rather than acting on these findings, Meta kept features such as autoplay, infinite scroll and push notifications in place precisely because they maximised the time teenagers spent on the platform and, by extension, the number of advertisements they viewed.
Meta's lawyer, Kevin Huff, offered a contrasting interpretation: documents flagging potential harms are evidence that the company actively searches for problems in order to fix them, not evidence of deliberate neglect. He said Meta has developed tools to limit problematic use of Instagram and works to equip parents and teachers to help keep young people safe online. Huff urged jurors to consider responsibility more broadly. "Protecting teens online is a shared responsibility," he said. "It takes a village."
The Tennessee case is the second US state lawsuit against Meta over its platforms' alleged impact on children to reach a jury. Earlier this year, a jury in New Mexico found the company liable and ordered it to pay $375 million in civil penalties; a judge there is still weighing additional sanctions and possible changes to Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp in that state. Tennessee is one of 42 states that have individually sued Meta, while more than two dozen other state lawsuits have been consolidated into multidistrict litigation in San Francisco. Thousands of separate suits brought by families and school districts are also pending.
The scale of the legal pressure underscores why this trial matters well beyond Tennessee's borders. If the jury finds Meta liable, proceedings will move to a second phase in which Chancellor Russell Perkins will determine the extent of any financial penalties and whether Instagram must be structurally changed. A separate federal trial involving Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap, brought by attorneys general from 29 states, is scheduled to begin next month in Oakland, California — meaning the broader reckoning over social media's impact on children is far from over.