Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Meta, appeared in a Los Angeles court on February 18, 2026 to give evidence in a very important trial. It was the first time he has ever spoken in front of a jury about whether his social media platforms are harmful to children. The case involves a young woman, known only as K.G.M., who is now 20 years old. She says that she started using YouTube when she was six years old and Instagram when she was just nine. She claims that these platforms were designed to be addictive, and that using them caused her serious mental health problems, including depression, body image issues, and suicidal thoughts.

The main question of the trial is whether Meta and YouTube deliberately built features into their platforms to keep young users on them for as long as possible. The lawyers for K.G.M. pointed to specific features such as beauty filters, “infinite scroll,” automatic video play, and push notifications as examples of tools that were designed to make the apps difficult to stop using. They compared these tactics to those used by tobacco companies in the past, who were found to have known their products were harmful but continued to sell them anyway. Lawyers for the parents also pointed to internal company documents that showed the goal of making social media apps difficult to put down.

Zuckerberg strongly disagreed with these claims. He said that Meta does not try to make its platforms addictive, and that he has always tried to manage the safety of young users in a responsible way. He said that if the platform makes people unhappy, they will eventually stop using it, so it is not in the company’s interest to harm its users. However, the plaintiff’s lawyers showed the court evidence that suggested Meta had set targets for how long users should spend on Instagram each day, which made Zuckerberg’s answers more difficult to believe for some people.

The lawyers also questioned Zuckerberg about children who are too young to use Instagram. Meta policy requires users to be at least 13 years old, but lawyers shared a document showing that around 4 million children under 13 were using the platform in the US. Zuckerberg said that some children lie about their age when they create an account, and that Meta removes underage users when it finds them.

Outside the courtroom, many parents gathered to watch Zuckerberg arrive. Some of them have lost children and believe social media was responsible. They say they have been waiting for years for a moment like this, where the head of a major tech company must answer difficult questions in front of a jury.

There was also an unexpected incident during the trial. At least one member of Zuckerberg’s security team appeared to be wearing Meta’s AI-equipped Ray-Ban glasses as he arrived at the courthouse. These glasses can record video. Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl warned that anyone who had used such glasses to record inside the courtroom must delete the footage immediately, or face serious consequences. She also said that no one was allowed to use any technology that could identify the jurors by their faces. Many people saw this as a serious mistake by the Meta team.

The trial is expected to last around six to eight weeks. It is being watched very closely because the result could affect over 1,600 similar cases from families and schools across the United States. If Meta and YouTube lose, they could be required to pay very large amounts of money and may be forced to change the way their platforms work.