Tennessee Tells Jury Meta Knew Instagram Harmed Teens and Stayed Silent
The state built its opening statement around a 2017 document in which Meta staff warned that Instagram’s core features were “inherently at odds with well-being”.
July 28, 2026 – 7:37 am
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A jury in Nashville heard this week that Meta once concluded, in its own internal language, that the features keeping teenagers glued to Instagram were “inherently at odds with well-being” and that the company then chose to say nothing about it.
The line comes from a 2017 document that the state of Tennessee has placed at the centre of its case, and it set the tone for opening statements in a trial that could run for seven weeks.
The case, brought by Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti in the Chancery Court in Nashville before Chancellor Russell Perkins, argues that Meta violated the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act by hiding what it knew and by shipping features designed to hook young users.
It is the latest venue for a fight over Instagram’s addictive design that regulators have been building towards for years, and one of the first to put those questions in front of a jury rather than settle them on paper.
The Stakes Across the Wider Litigation
The stakes across the wider litigation have grown steep enough that the numbers now read as abstractions.
Tom Cartmell, arguing for Tennessee, told jurors that Meta’s own product managers had written in 2017 that features such as notifications and infinite scroll worked against users’ well-being, and that the company should warn the public.
“This warning never came,” he said. The state contends that Meta researchers went on to document compulsive teen use, and its links to eating disorders, depression, and self-harm, while leadership left the underlying design in place because it drove ad views.
Much of that argument runs through Mark Zuckerberg. The complaint alleges that Meta’s chief executive was repeatedly warned by employees about research showing Instagram harmed the mental health of young users, and that he declined to fund the work that might have reduced those harms.
Meta’s Defense
No executives were named from the stand during opening statements, though, and the allegation remains the state’s characterisation rather than a finding.
Meta’s lawyer, Kevin Huff, offered jurors the same documents read the other way. The internal research the state calls a cover-up, he argued, is instead evidence of a company that goes looking for problems on its platforms so that it can fix them.
Meta has built tools to limit heavy use of Instagram and to help parents and teachers set boundaries, he said, before landing on the framing the defence will lean on for weeks: “Protecting teens online is a shared responsibility. It takes a village.”
Outside the courtroom, Meta has struck a similar note, saying it has “spent a decade building safe, age-appropriate defaults for teens alongside simple tools for parents to set the right boundaries for their family”.