Meta heads to court in a landmark trial about kids and social media addiction

In this illustration photo from Oct. 28, 2021, a person watches on a smartphone as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveils the Meta logo. Chris Delmas/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

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Meta will head into federal court on Tuesday to fend off accusations from a group of state attorneys general that it designed its social media platforms to hook children, lied to the public about the risks those platforms posed and gathered data on kids in violation of the law.

The case is the latest in a wave of suits against social media companies, meant to hold them accountable for the way they design their products . Legal experts compare it to landmark litigation against tobacco and opioid manufacturers that changed those companies' behaviors as well as the public discussion about the risks of cigarettes and prescription painkillers.

Four states — California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey — are seeking up to $1.4 trillion in penalties and product changes under consumer protection laws that they allege were broken by Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. They say Meta also violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by hoovering up data about children.

"We allege in our complaint, and what we're prepared to prove at trial, is that they're deceiving consumers about Facebook and Instagram's dangers," said New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport in an interview with NPR. "They're putting the profits … over the health of a generation of young people."

The suit is a bellwether in what's known as multidistrict litigation. It consolidates thousands of similar lawsuits to create consistency and avoid duplication of tasks like evidence gathering.

One of the suit's central arguments is that Meta designed and deployed features to capture young users' attention and prolong their time on social media, including the "like" button, the infinite-scroll function and recommendation algorithms that "encourage compulsive use." The company financially benefited from this, the suit claims, because Meta makes money from advertising. The longer kids stay on Meta's sites — and the more effectively that advertising can be targeted to them — the more money Meta stands to make.