LOS ANGELES: Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg pushed back in court on Wednesday against a lawyer’s suggestion that he had misled Congress about the design of its social media platforms, as a landmark trial over youth social media addiction continued.

Zuckerberg was questioned on his statements to Congress in 2024, at a hearing where he said the company did not give its teams the goal of maximising time spent on its apps.

Mark Lanier, a lawyer for a woman who accuses Meta of harming her mental health when she was a child, 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 that while Meta previously had goals related to the amount of time users spent on the app, it has 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.

While Zuckerberg has previously testified on the subject before Congress, the stakes are higher at the jury trial in Los Angeles, California. Meta may have to pay damages if it loses the case, and the verdict could erode Big Tech’s long-standing legal defence against claims of user harm.

The lawsuit and others like it are part of a global backlash against social media platforms over children’s mental health. Australia has prohibited access to social media platforms for users under age 16, and other countries including Spain are considering similar curbs.

Published in Dawn, February 19th, 2026