Jurors in a child safety trial in New Mexico today heard testimony from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. During pre-recorded testimony, Zuckerberg was repeatedly asked about the company’s understanding of social media addiction and other issues studied by its researchers.
During the deposition, which was recorded last March, Zuckerberg was asked about several findings from Meta researchers who studied how the company’s apps affect users and teens. The CEO underestimated the importance of many of these documents.
At the beginning of the testimony, which Engadget watched on the Courtroom View network, Zuckerberg was questioned about a document on the impact of feedback on Facebook users. The document states that “Contributors on Facebook are likely to learn to associate the act of posting with feedback” which “will motivate contributors to visit the site more often and receive rewards.” Zuckerberg said he was “not sure that’s how it actually works in practice, but I agree that you’re summarizing what they seem to be saying.”
Later, the CEO was questioned about a document that graphed the proportion of 11- and 12-year-olds who were monthly active users on Instagram. The chart indicated that at the time, about 20 percent of 11-year-olds were monthly users of the service. “While I agree with what the graph says, I’m not familiar with what methodology we were using to estimate it,” Zuckerberg said. “I believe that if we had direct knowledge that anyone was under the age of 13, we would have removed them from our services.”
The Attorney General of New Mexico sued the company in 2023 over alleged lapses in child safety, including allowing predators access to minors and manufacturing facilities that were known to contain drug addicts. In court, Meta’s lawyers and executives have refuted the idea that social media should be considered an “addiction”. In public statements, the company has said that the lawsuits have relied on “cherry-picked quotes and excerpts of conversations taken out of context” and that it has “consistently put teen safety ahead of growth for more than a decade.”
Like his recent testimony in a separate trial over social media addiction in Los Angeles, Zuckerberg repeatedly rejected the “specialness” of the questions he was asked. And he said Meta’s goal was to make its apps “useful” rather than to increase the time people spend with them.
Zuckerberg was also questioned about a document written by a company researcher that said “there is growing scientific evidence, particularly in the US, … that the average net impact of Facebook on people’s well-being is slightly negative.” “My understanding is that the consensus view is not that,” the CEO said.
This is not the first time that a Meta executive has tried to downplay the importance of internal research. The company used similar tactics in 2021 when former employee turned whistleblower Francis Haugen disclosed documents showing that Facebook researchers had found that Instagram made some teenage girls feel worse about themselves.
Zuckerberg’s testimony came a day after jurors heard recorded testimony from Instagram chief Adam Mosseri. The executive was also asked about Haugen’s revelations and Meta’s response to them. Some of those revelations, he said, were based on “problematic research.” “Most research is surveys. We run hundreds of surveys every month.”
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