Attorneys representing the state of Tennessee stood before a Nashville jury on Monday and argued that Meta Platforms’ top leadership turned a blind eye to the company’s own internal research showing that Instagram was causing serious harm to teenagers — all in the name of maximizing profits from young users.
Opening statements kicked off a seven-week trial in Tennessee state court, where state lawyers described a troubling pattern: Meta’s own researchers repeatedly raised alarms that some teens were compulsively hooked on the platform, leading to eating disorders, depression, and self-harm. Yet despite those internal warnings, the company kept features like autoplay, notifications, and infinite scroll fully operational — tools the state says were deliberately engineered to keep teenagers glued to Instagram as long as possible and drive up ad revenue.
A lawyer representing Meta pushed back, telling jurors that the company has been open and transparent about the risks teenagers encounter on Instagram and about the volume of dangerous content it detects. He said Meta works diligently to uncover issues and address them.
During opening statements — which were watched by Reuters via Courtroom View Network — Tom Cartmell, an attorney for Tennessee, played the familiar chime of a smartphone notification for the jury. He explained that unpredictable rewards like notifications trigger dopamine responses that can fuel addiction, with an especially powerful effect on developing young minds.
Cartmell told jurors that Meta fully understood the brain science behind why teenagers find the platform so hard to resist. He then showed an internal company document from 2017 in which Meta product managers wrote that features like notifications and infinite scroll
