Instagram has tracked the time users spend on the app, and company executives have marked “milestones” the app has reached each year. Daily usage of the app increased from 40 minutes per day in 2023 to 46 minutes per day in 2026, according to documents released during Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony in a state court case in Los Angeles County Superior Court this month.
The focus on measuring turnaround time is a key element of the lawsuit, which also marks Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s first appearance before a jury.
In the lawsuit currently underway in LA County Superior Court, “KGM v. Platforms et al.,” a jury will decide whether social media companies are liable for youth mental health issues caused by their platforms or addictive designs. Snap and TikTok settled before the trial began, but Meta and YouTube declined. Executives from both companies are scheduled to testify during the trial.
The 19-year-old plaintiff in the case, identified as KGM, or ‘Kaley’, says using social media at a young age was detrimental to her mental health, leading to her addiction to the technology and depression, including suicidal thoughts.
Meta disputes that its app is responsible for Kaley’s problems.
“The question for the Los Angeles jury is whether Instagram was a significant factor in the plaintiff’s mental health issues. The evidence will show that she faced many significant and difficult challenges long before she began using social media,” Meta spokeswoman Stephanie Otway said in an emailed statement about the case.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys are hoping to prove that Meta set its sights internally to increase the amount of time users spent on Instagram despite knowing there were minors on the platform. During Zuckerberg’s testimony this month, he was pressed about why he told Congress in 2024 that children under 13 would not be allowed on Instagram, despite the company knowing about 4 million children under 13 on the app in 2015, according to internal documents. The document also noted that this figure represents 30% of all 10- to 12-year-old children in the United States.
Zuckerberg dismissed the question from Congress, saying he had answered the question honestly by citing the company’s policies, and noted that Instagram had removed underage users it discovered. He also tried to make it clear that the “milestones” the company was tracking were not the same as the specific “goals” the Instagram team was supposed to achieve.
But other documents referenced by the plaintiff’s legal team during their testimony pointed to Instagram’s growing interest in tweens and the teen demographic, with an email written by a former product manager going so far as to say, “Our overall company goal is to spend total teen time,” and “Mark decided that teens would be the company’s top priority in the first half of 2017.” Another market event from December 2018 found that teenagers are the “highest retention age group” in the United States. This suggests that the company cares about demographics.
Another email, written by Zuckerberg adviser Nick Clegg, who left the company last year, pointed out that Instagram’s age requirement is essentially “unenforceable.”
Even though Instagram knew there were underage users on its platform, it took no steps to address existing underage users until August 2021, when it began asking users to enter their birthdays, plaintiffs’ attorneys argued. (Meta responded that it began asking age when signing up for new users starting in 2019.)
Instagram has recently rolled out a series of teen and parental control features, but it remains focused on a younger audience. Meta’s current hope is for Instagram to become the largest teen destination by monthly active users in the U.S. and around the world this year, according to other internal documents referenced in the testimony.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide or needs to talk, there are people who want to help. To contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, call or text 988.
