Meta asserts that it has a longstanding record of safeguarding its youngest users, as it mounts a defense against a barrage of lawsuits alleging that its social media platform inflicts harm on children.

In the most recent case, the social media giant is contesting allegations in a California federal court that it worsens the youth mental health crisis by deliberately and covertly designing features to make children addicted to its platforms, Instagram and Facebook.

Four states are demanding billions of dollars in compensation and substantial reforms to how Meta operates these apps.

The mental health of children, along with their social media activity and exposure, are issues that "Meta takes seriously and tries to act on," Paul Schmidt, a legal representative for the tech conglomerate, asserted in his opening remarks this week.

Critics contend that the company's safety record is inadequate and that numerous of its protective measures are, in practice, ineffective.

They include Marc Berkman, executive director at the Organization for Social Media Safety, who said Meta introduced safeguards promising to protect children in response to public pressure rather than out of concern.

Berkman noted a "lack of real institutional willingness to act here."

Here is an overview of the changes Meta has made, as well as the efforts that advocates argue still need to be carried out.

The majority of modifications Meta has implemented are geared toward tackling harassment and offensive content.

Instagram users have long been able to block others — and, alongside Meta's oldest flagship, Facebook — the app has gradually added features for reporting problematic accounts and inappropriate content.

In 2016, Instagram users were granted the ability to delete or filter comments they deemed offensive, and subsequently introduced warnings designed to prompt users to reconsider posting potentially harmful content, along with options to restrict comments and tags on their posts.

Meta further claims it prevents adults from starting private chats with teens unless they are already connected, and has stepped up checks to ensure users under 13 — the minimum age for holding a Facebook or Instagram account — are not online.

Schmidt said in his opening remarks that Meta recognizes some users still sign up using incorrect birthdays, but that the company takes enforcement of age limits seriously.

The company asserts that it also displays warnings and resources at the top of Instagram search results for suicide, self-harm, and eating disorders, and promotes its 'Teen Accounts,' launched in 2024, as a secure online space for adolescents.

It aligns photo and video restrictions for teen accounts with those of a PG-13 movie, unless parents give permission otherwise.

Critics contend that these changes amount to little more than corporate posturing.

A September 2025 report from former employee and whistleblower Arturo Béjar and four online safety advocacy nonprofits accused Meta of failing to take "real steps" to address youth safety, instead opting for "splashy headlines about new tools for parents and Instagram Teen Accounts for underage users."

"What we actually found is that, overall, the protections Meta marketed under Teen Accounts were seriously lacking," said Haley Hinkle, policy counsel at Fairplay, which co-authored the report.

After reviewing 47 of Meta's 53 safety features for teens on Instagram, they discovered that 60% were either unavailable or did not work as advertised, Hinkle added.

Meta characterized the report’s findings as “misleading” and “dangerously speculative.”

Researchers argue that Meta's attempts to prevent children from becoming addicted to the scrolling features of social media platforms have been largely unsuccessful.

Ashley Shea, a doctoral candidate at Cornell University whose research centers on social media and online spaces, points to what academics call "attention-capture deceptive designs," which are not unique to Meta's platforms.

These include infinite scrolling, "casino style" pull-to-refresh features, push notifications, and algorithmic recommendations.

Such features "prey on the cognitive vulnerabilities" of young people with developing brains, especially their need for rewards.

Meta has taken significant measures to address harmful content, cyberbullying, and sexual predators, Shea said, but she has not observed the same level of commitment to counteracting the addictive impact of deceptive attention-capture designs.

There’s no question that some teens struggle to manage their time with social media, Schmidt said Tuesday, adding that Meta’s time management tools prove its evolution on the issue.

Those tools include parental supervision controls and in-app “nudges” for teen users who repeatedly look at the same type of content or spend too long on Instagram or Facebook late at night.

Hinkle points out that the "entirely voluntary" time management tools are not easy to set up, and amount to "far too little too late."

Béjar, the former Meta employee and whistleblower, concurs.

In his testimony on Wednesday, he asserted that a feature called “Take a Break” is “designed to fail.”

Users must activate the function themselves, and, as he noted, very few actually do.

Fundamentally, tech companies are designed to maximize revenue, Berkman argued, and for nearly every modern social media platform, this means "maximizing children using their features for as long as they can."

Shea observed that the legal challenges mark a novel development, centering on “the fact that these are defective products by design because of their features, not the content per se.”

Moreover, outside the courtroom, mounting pressure on legislators could prompt more sweeping changes across the industry.

“The momentum only continues to gain strength,” she remarked.

“At the end of the day, these are profit-driven enterprises that react to market forces.

Consequently, I believe that the more financial strain they face as a result of these legal actions, the sooner they will be compelled to adapt.”