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Zuckerberg grilled about Meta’s strategy to target ‘teens’ and ‘tweens’
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrives at the Los Angeles Superior Court ahead of the social media trial tasked to determine whether social media giants deliberately designed their platforms to be addictive to children on Feb. 18, 2026. Zuckerberg is scheduled to testify Wednesday.
Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
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Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was clearly getting testy.
“That’s not what I’m saying at all,” said the tech billionaire. “I think you’re misunderstanding what I’m saying,” Zuckerberg responded. “You’re mischaracterizing what I’m saying,” he shot back.
The executive was testifying on Wednesday before a jury in Los Angeles in a marquee social media trial accusing Meta of deliberately designing features of Instagram to addict children, and the legal team for the family suing was intent on showing that Zuckerberg’s fingerprints were all over the company’s big decisions.
Mark Lanier, a Texas trial lawyer and pastor with a folksy courtroom demeanor, directed Zuckerberg’s attention to a 2020 internal Meta document showing that 11-year-olds were four times as likely to keep coming back to Facebook, compared to older users. Instagram’s minimum age for signing up is 13.
“People who join Facebook at 11 years old? Lanier asked Zuckerberg. “I thought y’all didn’t have any of those?”
Lanier then went over Meta internal documents highlighting goals to increase the time 10-year-olds spend on Instagram.
“I don’t remember the context of this email from more than ten years ago,” Zuckerberg said. “I think the way we should build things is to build useful services for people to connect with their family and friends and learn about the world.”
One 2018 internal Meta document stated “If we wanna win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens,” Lanier pointed out, saying that undercut Meta’s own policies.
The legal team representing the plaintiff, a 20-year-old California woman known in court documents as “Kaley,” attempted to demonstrate that the top-down goal of Meta has always been to encourage users to get on their platforms as young as possible, and once there, to figure out ways to keep them around. Often features like “beauty filters,” made the app more alluring, Lanier argued.
When the company hired experts who affirmed that such appearance-enhancing filters contributed to body-image issues among young girls, Zuckerberg would not dispense with the filters tools, calling getting rid of them was “paternalistic.”
Under questioning in court, the billionaire Facebook founder responded: “What we allowed was letting people use those filters if they wanted but deciding not to recommend them to people,” he said. “So that was the balance we came to to let people express themselves the way they want.”
Kaley, who’s also identified as KGM in court documents, often used these filters, which her lawsuit says contributed to body dysmorphia and other mental health issues.
Had Zuckerberg looked at Kaley’s Instagram posts before the trial, Lanier asked? His staff had shown him some, he responded.
Files are brought inside the Los Angeles Superior Court on Feb 18, 2026 as part of a major trial involving Meta and Google over whether their products harm young people.
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Jill Connelly/Getty Images
That’s when Lanier, who is known for orchestrating spectacles at trial, had five lawyers unspool a roughly 20-foot collage of hundreds of photos that Kaley posted to Instagram. Lanier implored Zuckerberg to dwell on the posts. Other observers in the room, including the media, were not able to see the photos.
When it was time for Meta’s lawyer to ask Zuckerberg questions, he emphasized that the company does not have an incentive for people to have harmful experiences on its services.
“From a business perspective, people think if we maximize the amount of attention people spend, that that’s good for us,” Zuckerberg said. “But if people feel like they’re not having a good experience, why would they keep using the product?”
Keeping users safe, especially teen users, has always been a priority, Zuckerberg said.
“Questions about well-being I consider part of this for sure,” he said. “If you build a community and people don’t feel safe, that’s not sustainable and eventually people go and join another community.”
1,600 other plaintiffs
The appearance of Zuckerberg, the star witness of the trial, came in the second week of what’s expected to be a six-week proceeding. Other tech executives, social media specialists, addiction experts and others have also testified.
Kaley, the plaintiff, is expected to deliver the most emotional testimony later in the trial. Her lawsuit claims she began using social media at age 6, including YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Snap. After becoming hooked on the platforms, she said her body image issues, depression and suicidal thoughts worsened. The suit points to features like beauty filters, infinite scroll and auto-play as being tantamount to a “digital casino.” Evidence of the harms of these features were concealed from the public, the lawsuit says.
Julianna Arnold, whose daughter died from fentanyl she bought from someone on Instagram, talks about watching Mark Zuckerberg testify outside the Los Angeles Superior Court on Feb. 18, 2026.
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In response, Meta and Google, which owns YouTube, have said the accusations over-simplify the complexity of adolescent mental health issues. The companies argue social media use does not directly cause young people to be mentally unwell, so they should not be held legally liable for a user’s mental health struggles.
Kaley’s legal team called expert witnesses who described multiple studies linking regular social media use with worsening depression, anxiety and body image issues.
The jury will determine to what degree social media platforms should be held legally culpable for plaintiff Kaley’s struggles. The trial is a bellwether case tied to 1,600 similar suits filed by families and school districts. How the jury decides is expected to influence settlement talks in all those pending cases.
While debates about social media addiction have raged for decades, it has taken until now for a major trial on the issue to unfold largely due to a federal legal shield that has protected Silicon Valley. A law known as Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act has allowed tech companies to fend off lawsuits over what users post to their sites. Social media firms have also won legal battles, including a key Supreme Court case, that have found how companies curate content on platforms is a type of protected free speech.
Despite these protections, the plaintiff’s lawyers in the Los Angeles case found a way to legally attack tech giants: by treating social media apps as unsafe products, viewing Instagram, YouTube and other services as defective under product liability law. The argument is that tech companies deliberately designed social media sites as harmful and dismissed internal warnings that the services could be problematic for teenagers.
The jury will ultimately have to assess Zuckerberg’s credibility, which was under attack on Wednesday.
Lanier, Kaley’s lawyer, brought up an internal document showing how Meta communications staffers have pushed Zuckerberg to portray himself as more “human” and “relatable,” and “empathetic, and less “fake,” and “corporate,” and “cheesy.”
When questioned about his performance in various other public settings, whether in courtrooms or before Congress, Zuckerberg showed some humility.
He said: “I think I’m known to actually be pretty bad at this,” which drew some laughter from the courtroom.
The Labor Department says the vast majority of new jobs created over the last year went to women, most of them in health care.
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In December 2016, as Donald Trump was headed to the White House for the first time, Betsey Stevenson offered the incoming president some economic advice.
Stevenson, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan, argued in an op-ed that it would be a disservice to encourage men “to cling to work that isn’t coming back.” She cited Trump’s promise to bring an iPhone factory to the U.S.
“If Trump really wants to get more Americans working,” she wrote at the time, “he’ll have to do something out of his comfort zone: make girly jobs appeal to manly men.”
It’s a message she believes is even more relevant today.
For decades, the focus has been on getting more women into male-dominated fields. Some efforts have been more successful than others. But now, with the vast majority of new jobs going to women, it’s clear that men need help, too.
“This is happening at a time where it’s become verboten to talk about diversity, equity and inclusion,” Stevenson says. “And yet the people we need to be talking about right now are men.”
17 times as many jobs filled by women
In the mid-1970s, women held about 40% of jobs in the U.S, not including farm work or self employment. By the early 2000s, women’s share of jobs had grown to just under half. It’s hovered around there since, crossing the 50% threshold just a few times, including during the Great Recession, just before COVID, and now.
That parity masks the significant gains women have recently made in the labor market. Of the 369,000 jobs the Labor Department says were created since the start of Trump’s second term, nearly all — 348,000 of them — went to women, with only 21,000 going to men. That’s nearly 17 times as many jobs filled by women as by men.
The lopsidedness was driven by huge growth in health care, where women hold nearly 80% of jobs. Over the past 12 months, health care alone added 390,000 jobs, more than in the economy overall, making up for job losses elsewhere.
“If we want to see job growth that’s as robust for men as it is for women, we’re going to have to see men embracing those kinds of jobs,” says Stevenson.
So far, that hasn’t happened in any meaningful way. Stevenson believes it’s because men are more likely than women to have an identity tied to a particular occupation, making it harder for them to find work outside that field, much less in one dominated by women.
Meanwhile, in his second term, Trump has not strayed from his message that manufacturing will make the country strong. It’s something he emphasized in his second inaugural address, declaring that “America will be a manufacturing nation once again,” and in his repeated promises that tariffs would “bring factories roaring back.”
When manufacturers added 15,000 jobs in March, the White House called it proof that “the best days for American workers, manufacturers, and families are still ahead,” despite the fact that the sector is still down 82,000 jobs from when Trump took office.
“We have seen a year of a president absolutely fixated [on] growing the manufacturing sector,” Stevenson says. “There’s not enough of those jobs for men as a whole to thrive.”
A push for policies to open doors for men
What’s happening now in the labor market comes as no surprise to Richard Reeves, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, a nonpartisan think tank.
He says not enough attention has been paid to the scarcity of men in certain professions, and now we’re seeing the consequences.
“There is no cause for panic here,” says Reeves, who’s been studying the decades-long decline in labor force participation among men. “But I do think we should be alert to signs that the labor market might be moving even more quickly in directions that are leaving too many men behind.”
Reeves notes that for years, the country has embraced policies and programs aimed at getting more women into science, technology, engineering and math, and the share of women in STEM jobs has grown.
“But that didn’t happen by itself. It happened as a result of concerted efforts to break down gender stereotypes,” he says.
Still, gaps remain, and some of those efforts have seen their government funding cut under Trump.
Now Reeves says what’s needed are policies and programs to draw male workers into fields such as nursing, teaching and social work.
“Those are occupations that serve people, and they should look like the people that they serve,” he says. “And it’s good for men because it means they won’t lose out on those jobs if that’s where the growth is coming from.”
Framing jobs as more masculine
Stevenson has been thinking about ways to make the fastest-growing sectors of the economy more welcoming to men.
“I think there are ways for us to talk about those jobs as being particularly masculine,” she says.
For instance, many health care jobs could be framed as roles requiring the strength to lift people. Preschools could highlight the need for teachers who serve as positive male role models.
“Kids love to be rough and tumble and build things,” she says.
Stevenson knows some people will be offended by such gender stereotyping.
“But I do want to encourage us to realize that we have to help men understand that they can do caregiving roles and stay masculine,” she says.
Ongoing challenges for women and men
What Stevenson doesn’t want people to conclude is that everything is okay now that women are leading on jobs.
“We know that there is still discrimination that holds people back,” she says.
For women, she says, that discrimination might be preventing them from getting the promotion that they deserve, contributing to the widening gender pay gap. For men, it may mean sitting on the sidelines because they don’t think there’s a role for them in the economy.
“I think we can use this moment to realize that discrimination, occupational segregation… these are things that harm all of us, not just one narrow group,” she says.
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