Meta faces, before federal justice, the accusation of around thirty American states of having made Facebook and Instagram addictive for minors: here is what the attorneys general are demanding, how they quantify it and what Mark Zuckerberg's group, already beaten twice in court this year, responds.
What States are demanding
Leaders of a coalition of 29 states, four of them - California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey - will try to demonstrate three things to a jury: that Meta equipped its platforms with features designed to retain adolescents, that it misled the public about their dangers, and that it collected the data of children under 13 without parental consent, in violation of a federal law.
The four prosecutors are first demanding the addition: almost 200 billion dollars in penalties, according to figures that are still provisional. The States are also asking to impose an overhaul of Facebook and Instagram for minors, via a series of measures which describe, implicitly, their grievances.
Their wish is to see the most protective settings automatically imposed on those under 18: hidden “like” counters, notifications cut off except messages from loved ones, one hour of use per day, nothing at night or during school hours, etc. Settings that a teenager could only relax by linking their account to that of a parent.
Algorithms could no longer base their recommendations on viewing time or shares, but only on declared preferences; automatic scrolling and reading would require explicit consent; and age would be verified upon registration, other than by the declared date of birth. All under the supervision of an independent monitor appointed by the court.
Where do the billions claimed come from?
No US law provides for a $200 billion fine. The figure is born from a multiplication: consumer protection laws punish each offense separately, from a few thousand to a few tens of thousands of dollars depending on the state, and prosecutors count one offense per minor affected. Their experts estimated, using Meta's internal data, how many teenagers and children under 13 have used Instagram and Facebook since 2012 in their jurisdictions.
Such an amount would represent nearly a year of Meta's turnover, and more than three times its annual profit. However, no one expects such a figure in the event of a conviction: the States themselves reserve the right to adjust their request between now and the end of the debates, and the judge, alone to decide, will weigh it according, in particular, to Meta's ability to pay.
Finally, the attorneys general are demanding the restitution of profits (“disgorgement”, in English), that is to say the income derived from advertisements presented to minors.
What Meta responds
The group, in deep disagreement with these accusations, bases its defense on three main blocks, already partly exposed this winter in Los Angeles, during a local trial lost against a teenage girl. Meta denies any lies: “addiction” to social networks is not included in the DSM-5, the reference manual for American psychiatry, and the subject is scientifically debated. Denying the addictive nature of its platforms cannot therefore be a deception, at most an opinion, protected by freedom of expression.
On the children's data, Meta admits to having ignored the parents' consent, but maintains that this requirement does not apply to him, since those under 13 are prohibited and that these identified children see their accounts deleted, therefore she does not have "effective knowledge" of their presence, a condition imposed by law. No causality, finally: the mental health of adolescents “cannot be attributed to a single application”, defends the group.
Faced with the requested overhauls, Meta highlights its “teenage accounts”, launched in September 2024. Too late and too little, respond the States: the trial judges the facts stopped at March 2024 and the time limits remain optional and rarely activated. As for penalties, the group denounces a potential sanction "without equivalent in the history of consumer protection": the four big tobacco companies, whose 1998 transaction to end prosecutions has become the historical reference, have paid more than 176 billion dollars in a quarter of a century. And continue to pay 9 billion per year.
