Google-owned YouTube acquired the remaining 30%. Much of the internal documentary evidence presented at the trial related to Meta, a fact reflected in the jury’s decision to hold the company 70% responsible. Together, the documents form a detailed record of what each company knew about the impact of its products on young users and when.
hazard study
The earliest and most extensive evidence emerged in September 2021, when former Facebook employee Frances Haugen provided internal documents to the Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal’s “Facebook Files” series revealed that Meta conducted at least three years of research on Instagram’s impact on young users and repeatedly found the platform harmful, especially to teenage girls.
These include a 2019 internal presentation posted on an internal Facebook message board that stated: “We are making body image issues worse for one in three teen girls.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, a March 2020 slideshow found that 32% of teenage girls said that when they feel bad about their bodies, Instagram makes them feel worse.
Among teens who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of U.S. users traced those feelings to Instagram, according to another internal report reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Another survey found that 17% of teenage girls said the platform exacerbated their eating disorders.
The research spanned a variety of formats — focus groups, diary studies, online surveys and large-scale questionnaires involving tens of thousands of users, the Wall Street Journal reported.
A study that surveyed more than 50,000 people in 10 countries, including India, found that 48% of teenage girls said they always or often compared their appearance to others on Instagram, according to documents later released to the U.S. Congress.
Facebook researchers also noted that the platform’s Explore page, which offers algorithmically curated content, is particularly harmful to younger users.
“Aspects of Instagram reinforce each other, creating a perfect storm,” the study said, according to The Wall Street Journal. Researchers found that teens described their use in documents they called “addict narratives” — ones in which they wished they could spend less time but were unable to stop.
According to the Wall Street Journal, when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was asked at a U.S. Congressional hearing in March 2021 whether the company had studied the impact of Instagram on children, he said he believed it had. In May of the same year, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said research showed the app’s impact on teen mental health was “very minimal.”
Attract young users
Another type of internal document, uncovered through litigation in the KGM trial, details Meta’s strategy for targeting younger users. According to NPR, attorneys for the plaintiffs provided the jury with internal communications in which Meta executives discussed efforts to attract and retain children and teenagers on the platform.
“If we want to win big among teenagers, we have to let them be teenagers,” one document states, according to NPR and the Associated Press.
Another internal memo showed that users as young as 11 were four times more likely to continue using Instagram than users of rival apps, even though the platform requires users to be 13 or older to create an account.
A 2015 internal review found 4 million children under the age of 13 were on Instagram, and a 2017 internal communication said employees “targeted children under the age of 13,” according to court documents cited in the trial report.
Until late 2019, Instagram did not require a date of birth when signing up.
Internal documents also show that Instagram has set a goal of 40 minutes of daily interaction per user by 2023, and plans to increase that to 46 minutes by 2026, IBTimes reported, citing court documents.
Parental controls: The company’s own findings
One of the most important documents to emerge from the trial is an unpublished meta-research project called “Project MYST,” conducted in collaboration with the University of Chicago.
The study surveyed 1,000 teens and their parents and found that common parental controls (time limits, supervision, restricted access) had little measurable impact on teens’ compulsive social media use.
Research has also found that children who have experienced adverse life events such as family instability or bullying are particularly susceptible to compulsive use.
Mosseri testified at the trial that he could not remember details of the MYST project other than its name, although court documents show he had approved the research.
The findings were never published, and no warnings were issued to parents or teens based on the findings.
The ignored warnings
In November 2023, the second Meta whistleblower Arturo Béjar testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee.
Béjar, a former Facebook engineering director who later advised Instagram, told senators that he had warned Meta’s top executives, including Zuckerberg, then-COO Sheryl Sandberg, Mosseri and chief product officer Chris Cox, about the prevalence of harmful experiences on the platform, CNBC and NPR reported.
Béjar cited internal survey data showing that 51% of Instagram users reported a bad or harmful experience in the last week. He testified that one in eight users aged 13 to 15 reported receiving unwanted sexual advances on Instagram in the past seven days.
Only 2% of harmful posts are removed.
On October 5, 2021, the same day Haugen testified before the Senate, Behar emailed Zuckerberg directly with data that he said validated her testimony. He told senators he never received a reply. He described Meta’s subsequent safety features as “placebo — nominal safety features just to appease the media and regulators,” according to NPR.
Internal employee communications presented at the trial provide a similar picture. One Meta employee described Instagram as “like a drug” and said employees were “basically enablers,” CBS News reported.
Another communication said: “We are creating reward deficiency disorder because people are so addicted to Instagram that they are not feeling the reward,” according to court documents cited in the trial report.
Both companies have since rolled out protections for younger users. In September 2024, Meta launched “Teen Accounts” on Instagram, automatically placing users under 18 in private accounts with restricted messaging, content filters, and notification limits; users under 16 will need parental permission to change these settings. In October 2025, Meta updated the program with content guidelines modeled after the PG-13 film rating.
YouTube will begin using AI-driven age estimation in July 2025 to detect users under 18 and automatically restrict age-restricted content and personalize ads.
No evidence has yet been disclosed on how effective it is.
Both Meta and Google said they disagreed with the verdict and planned to appeal.