Thirty US states, including California and New York, walked into a courtroom this week with a number that is almost impossible to say without pausing: more than $1 trillion. That is what they are seeking from Meta in a jury trial that kicked off Tuesday, and the money is arguably not even the most alarming part for the company. What the states want done to Instagram and Facebook, if they win, would fundamentally reshape how a generation of young people interacts online.
How Did We Get Here?
The lawsuit was first filed in 2023, and it accuses Meta of violating both federal and state privacy laws designed to protect children. This is not the first time Meta has faced legal fire over its treatment of young users. The company has absorbed a string of courtroom defeats in recent years, each one chipping away at its argument that its platforms are essentially neutral tools rather than finely tuned engagement machines. But the sheer scale of this trial, in terms of the number of states involved and the financial exposure, places it in a different category entirely.
For a full breakdown of what is being argued and what is at stake, the BBC’s coverage of the case offers a clear-eyed look at the moving parts.
The Features on Trial
When people think about Instagram, a handful of features come to mind immediately: the rush of likes appearing beneath a photo, the endless feed that keeps scrolling no matter how long you have been on the app, and the 24-hour Stories that vanish like they were never there. All of these are precisely what the states want gone, or at least heavily restricted, for younger users.
The list of demanded changes is specific and, for Meta’s product teams, almost certainly nightmare-inducing. The states want like counts removed, infinite scroll disabled, and ephemeral posts such as Instagram Stories banned for teenagers. They also want parental verification baked into the account creation process, a hard cap on multiple accounts per user, and the removal of image filters that alter physical appearance.
Why Each Demand Matters
Strip away the legal language and each demand targets a specific psychological mechanism. Like counts have been linked in multiple studies to social comparison and anxiety, particularly among adolescent girls. Infinite scroll, a design choice borrowed from slot machine psychology, removes the natural stopping points that might otherwise prompt a user to put the phone down. Ephemeral posts like Stories create a sense of urgency and fear of missing out, keeping users checking back repeatedly throughout the day.
Appearance-altering filters carry their own weight of criticism. Researchers and mental health professionals have warned for years that filters presenting idealized, smoothed, and often dramatically altered versions of faces set unrealistic beauty standards, particularly for young women and girls. Banning them is not a small ask. Filters are one of the most-used features on the platform.
What a Meta Loss Would Actually Look Like
A courtroom defeat of this magnitude would not just mean writing a check, however eye-watering. The behavioral and structural changes demanded by the states would require Meta to rethink core product decisions that have driven its engagement numbers for years. The infinite scroll alone is not a bug or a side feature. It is a foundational design choice that directly feeds time-on-platform metrics, which feed advertising revenue.
Removing like counts publicly has actually been tested by Meta before, with the company running experiments in several markets around 2019 and 2020. The response was mixed, and the company ultimately stepped back from making the change permanent. Being forced to do it by a court order is a very different scenario, one where the company loses control of the timeline and the framing entirely.
Parental verification for teenage accounts sounds straightforward, but implementing it at scale raises its own thorny questions about data collection, privacy, and what happens to the millions of underage users currently on the platforms without their parents’ knowledge or consent.
The Broader Industry Ripple Effect
Meta is the defendant, but the entire social media industry will be watching this verdict closely. TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube all operate features that mirror what the states are targeting here. A ruling that forces Meta to overhaul its platforms for minors would hand regulators and state attorneys general a powerful template for going after every other major platform using the same playbook.
The children’s online safety space has been building legislative and legal momentum for several years across both sides of the Atlantic. The UK’s Online Safety Act introduced new obligations for platforms around child protection. Several US states have already passed their own laws targeting social media access for minors. This trial is the sharpest edge of that movement so far.
Meta’s Position
Meta has consistently maintained that it invests heavily in tools and features designed to protect younger users, pointing to supervised account settings, screen time reminders, and content restrictions as evidence of its commitment to safety. The company is expected to argue that the plaintiffs are overstating both the harm caused and the legal violations alleged. Whether that defense holds up in front of a jury, rather than in the court of public opinion, is the question that will define the next chapter of social media as we know it.
The financial stakes alone make this one of the most consequential corporate trials in the history of the tech industry. But the structural changes hanging over Meta’s head if it loses may matter even more in the long run. A version of Instagram without likes, without infinite scroll, without Stories, and with mandatory parental sign-off would be a profoundly different product, one that its current teenage users might barely recognize.
The real question worth sitting with is this: if those features were removed tomorrow and young people still chose to stay on the platform, what would that tell us about what social media is actually for?
