Los Angeles: Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has said he regrets that Meta Platforms was too slow to improve its ability to identify under-age users on Instagram, as he faced sharp questioning in a landmark social media trial in California.

Giving evidence under oath before a jury in Los Angeles, the 41-year-old billionaire said the company had since strengthened its age-verification systems, but conceded: “I always wish that we could have gotten there sooner.”

The case is the first in a series of trials that could set a legal benchmark for thousands of lawsuits brought by American families against major technology firms. It marks the first time Zuckerberg has addressed the safety of his platforms directly before a jury.

Meta, which also owns Facebook and WhatsApp, is being sued alongside Google over claims that its platforms were designed in ways that encouraged compulsive use among young people, contributing to mental health problems.

What is the case about?

The lawsuit centres on a 20-year-old Californian woman, identified as Kaley G.M., who began using YouTube at six, Instagram at nine, and later TikTok and Snapchat. Her legal team argues that social media companies should bear responsibility for depression, anxiety and other harms she allegedly suffered.

Under-13s are not permitted to use Instagram. During often tense exchanges, the plaintiff’s lawyer, Mark Lanier, pressed Zuckerberg on internal complaints that the company had failed to enforce its own rules. He was shown company documents suggesting that in 2015 Instagram had four million users under 13, and that 30 per cent of American children aged between 10 and 12 were on the platform.

Lanier argued that children could easily sign up by entering false dates of birth, and that the ban on under-13s was buried deep within user agreements that young users could not reasonably be expected to read.

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Zuckerberg maintained that Meta is now “in the right place” on age verification, citing new tools that analyse user behaviour and content interactions to assess likely age, and said the systems would continue to improve.

He also faced questions about internal targets related to time spent on the company’s apps. Confronted with emails setting usage goals, he acknowledged that Meta “used to have goals around time”, but said the overarching aim had been to build useful services that connect people.

An earlier internal email from former public policy chief Nick Clegg was read to the court, describing the company’s inability to enforce its under-13 rule as “indefensible”.

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The trial, expected to run until late March, will determine whether Meta and Google can be held legally responsible for the mental health consequences allegedly linked to prolonged social media use. Two further trials are due to be heard in Los Angeles later this year. TikTok and Snapchat, also named in the original complaint, reached settlements with the plaintiff before proceedings began.