Instagram chief says social media is not ‘clinically addictive’ in landmark trial

By ELI TAN and CECILIA KANG

Instagram’s chief executive said last week that social media was not “clinically addictive,” disputing claims that the platform prioritized making money over the mental health of young users in a landmark tech addiction case.

The CEO, Adam Mosseri, described Instagram, which is owned by Meta, as a steward of strong safety protocols for teenagers. Social media could cause some harm, he said, but the company is careful to test features used by young people before releasing them. He added that people could be addicted to social media in the same way that they could be addicted to a good television show, but that did not mean they were “clinically addicted,” which was more serious.

“There’s always trade-off between safety and speech,” said Mosseri. “We’re trying to be as safe as possible and censor as little as possible.”

Mosseri, 43, who has led Instagram since 2018, was the first executive to testify in the bellwether case against Meta and YouTube. The case is part of a flood of lawsuits filed by teenagers, schools and state attorneys general that claim social media use can lead to addiction comparable to slot machines at casinos and cigarettes.

The tech companies have argued that there is no scientific evidence proving that their platforms cause addiction. They have also pointed to a federal law that protects them from liability for what their users post online.

A win by the plaintiff in this trial, a 20-year old California woman known as K.G.M., or Kaley, could open the door to significant monetary damages in similar lawsuits. The companies may also be forced to change the designs of their apps.

K.G.M. sued YouTube, TikTok, Snap and Meta, which owns Facebook, in 2023. She accused them of engineering their apps to create compulsive use, leading to body dysmorphia, anxiety and depression.

She settled with Snap and TikTok for undisclosed terms before the trial. Those companies remain defendants in other suits.

In opening statements Monday, her lawyer, Mark Lanier, argued that Instagram and YouTube’s apps were akin to “digital casinos.” He pointed to internal documents at Meta and Google, which owns YouTube, that compared the companies’ technology to gambling and Big Tobacco.

In its opening statement, Meta argued that K.G.M.’s mental health issues had been caused by familial abuse and turmoil, not social media. The company also presented medical records to show that social media addiction was not a focus of her therapy sessions.

YouTube said it was not a social media company and that its features were not designed to be addictive.

The trial has attracted representatives from tech policy and child safety groups, who filled out the crowded benches in the back of the courtroom. A handful of parents suing Meta and YouTube in separate cases slept overnight outside the courtroom steps to reserve spots in the front row of the gallery.

Wednesday, Lanier grilled Mosseri about Instagram features like beauty filters and infinite scroll, and his annual stock compensation. He asked Mosseri about Meta’s old slogan — “Move fast and break things” — and contrasted it with how the company framed its safety research. Mosseri said he now used a new slogan, “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.”

Lanier also presented internal documents from 2019, when Mosseri and the Facebook chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, considered lifting a ban on beauty filters that mimicked plastic surgery. Other executives implored them to reconsider because the filters could cause body dysmorphia in young users, according to the documents.