Mark Zuckerberg grilled by lawyers about app screen time in landmark social media addiction trial at LA cour

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg denied under oath Wednesday that he misled Congress about whether his company designed its social media platforms to maximize the time children spend on their screens.

Mark Lanier, the attorney representing a California woman who claims Meta’s platforms harmed her mental health when she was a child, grilled the billionaire tech mogul during his testimony in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Lanier showed jurors emails from 2014 and 2015 in which Zuckerberg outlined goals to increase time spent on the app by double-digit percentage points — pressing him on whether that contradicted his prior statements to Congress.

The attorney asked Zuckerberg whether those internal targets undercut his 2024 congressional testimony that Meta did not give its teams the goal of maximizing time spent on its platforms.

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“If you are trying to say my testimony was not accurate, I strongly disagree with that,” Zuckerberg told the court under oath.

This marked the billionaire founder’s first time testifying before a jury over claims that Meta’s platforms were engineered to hook young users and fuel a youth mental health crisis.

The lawsuit is the first of roughly 1,500 consolidated cases accusing Meta and other tech giants of designing addictive products that harm children — a verdict that could expose the company to significant damages.

With Post wires