Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly said the Facebook and Instagram operator bans children under 13 from its platforms, in a landmark trial about youth social ‌media addiction.

Mark Lanier, a lawyer for a woman suing Instagram and Google’s ‌YouTube for harming her mental health when she was a child, pressed Zuckerberg over his statement to the US Congress in 2024 that users under 13 were not allowed on the platform.

Lanier confronted Zuckerberg with internal Meta documents.

“If we want to win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens,” read one internal Instagram presentation from 2018.

“Yet you say that we would never do that,” Lanier said.

Zuckerberg said Lanier was “mischaracterising what I am saying”.

He said Meta has “had ‌different conversations over time to try to ⁠build different versions of services that kids can safely use”.

For example, Zuckerberg said Meta discussed creating a version of Instagram for children ​under 13, but ultimately never did.

Also presented was an email in which Nick Clegg, who was Meta’s vice president of global affairs, told Zuckerberg and other top executives, “we have age limits which are unenforced (unenforceable?)” and noted different policies for Instagram and Facebook made it “difficult to claim we are doing all we can”.

Zuckerberg responded by saying it was hard for ⁠app developers to verify user age and responsibility should be on the makers of mobile devices.

Earlier in his questioning, Lanier laid out three options when confronted with vulnerable people: Help them, ignore them, or “prey upon them and use them for our own ends”.

Zuckerberg said he agreed the last option was not what a reasonable company should do, saying.

“I think a reasonable company should try to help the people that use its services,” he said.

When asked about his compensation, Zuckerberg said he had pledged to give “almost all” of his money to charity, focusing on scientific research.

Lanier asked him how much money he had pledged to victims affected by social media, to which Zuckerberg replied, “I disagree with the characterisation of your question”.

Lanier also asked Zuckerberg about his “extensive” media training, and pointed to an internal document about feedback on Zuckerberg’s tone of voice on his own social media, imploring him to come off as “authentic, direct, human, insightful and real”, and instructing him to “not try hard, fake, robotic, corporate or cheesy”.

Zuckerberg pushed back against the idea he had been coached on his responses to questions, saying those offering the advice were “just giving feedback”.

“I think I’m actually well known to be sort of bad at this,” he said of his media appearances and public speaking.

Zuckerberg also faced ‌questions about his statement ​to Congress that he did not give Instagram teams the goal of maximising time spent on the app.

Lanier showed jurors emails from 2014 and 2015 in which Zuckerberg laid out aims to increase time spent on ​the app by double-digit percentage ‌points.

Zuckerberg said while Meta previously had goals for the amount of time users spent on the app, it had since changed its approach.

“If you are trying to say my testimony ​was not accurate, I strongly disagree with that,” Zuckerberg said.

The appearance was the billionaire Facebook founder’s first time testifying in court on Instagram’s effect on the mental health of young users.

Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, testified last week he was unaware of a recent Meta study showing no link between parental supervision and teens’ attentiveness to their own social media use.

Meta’s lawyer ​told jurors at the trial the woman’s health records showed her issues stemmed from a troubled childhood, and that social media was a creative outlet for her.

-with AP