Meta will have to defend in court the accusation that it built Facebook and Instagram to addict children, after a federal judge on Monday refused to dismiss the heart of a lawsuit brought by attorneys general from 29 states.
US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, sitting in Oakland, California, let the states press claims that Meta deceived the public, used unfair practices, and broke a federal child-privacy law. She found genuine factual disputes that a jury, not a motion, should settle.
In a 38-page ruling, Gonzalez Rogers said there were material disputes over whether Meta’s apps are addictive, whether the company falsely denied designing them that way, and whether it aimed them, at least partly, at kids.
The states have not proved any of that yet. What they have won is the right to try to.
The judge went further on one point, and it stings. She granted the states partial summary judgment on their claim under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, ruling that Meta did not meet the law’s notice and parental-consent requirements.
That is a finding of liability on a discrete issue before a jury has heard a word, which narrows what Meta can still argue when the case reaches trial.
The states allege that Meta engineered features to maximise the time and attention of young users, then hid what it knew about the harm. They cite research linking heavy use of the apps to depression, anxiety, insomnia, disrupted schooling, and self-harm, including suicide.
The COPPA finding is the sharper edge of the ruling for Meta. That federal statute governs how online services handle the data of children under 13, and it requires clear notice and verifiable parental consent before collecting it.
By ruling that Meta fell short of those requirements, the judge removed one question the company had hoped to argue in front of a jury.
Meta has consistently rejected the framing. The company points to its record on teen protections, including the Instagram Teen Accounts it rolled out with default limits on contact, content, and screen time.
Those defences will now be tested rather than assumed. The rollout of app-level controls has become a familiar move for platforms facing regulatory heat, and courts are increasingly asked whether the controls actually work.
Independent researchers have argued they often do not. A study co-authored by Meta whistleblower Arturo Béjar reported that roughly two-thirds of the teen safety tools tested were ineffective, with only about 17% working as described.
Meta disputes that methodology, but the gap between promise and performance is precisely the terrain the trial will cover. A trial over the claims of California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey is scheduled to begin on 18 August, according to court records. It will be the first courtroom test of the states’ theory against Meta.
Gonzalez Rogers is also overseeing sprawling multidistrict litigation involving more than 2,600 individuals, school districts, and local governments, all asking whether social platforms addict children.
That wider docket names not only Facebook and Instagram but Google’s YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok, which turns the August trial into an early read on how juries treat the whole sector.
Regulators have been circling social platforms and children for years, from app-store rulemaking to design codes aimed at minors. Litigation is now doing what regulation has been slow to finish.
Meta is not short of legal fronts, having spent recent years fending off antitrust actions and privacy claims across multiple jurisdictions. The addiction cases are different in kind, because they put product design itself on trial.
An earlier jury in a related matter already found Meta’s platforms harmful to children, a signal the company will weigh as August approaches.
For now, the ruling changes the maths. Meta enters trial with a privacy violation already on the board and its central defence, that it never built for addiction, headed to a jury.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
