Adam Mosseri told a Los Angeles jury Wednesday that he does not believe people can be “clinically addicted” to Instagram, pushing back against claims at the center of a major lawsuit against Meta and YouTube.
Mosseri became the first executive to testify in the closely watched social media addiction trial. The case stems from a lawsuit filed by a 20-year-old woman identified as Kaley, who alleges the companies built addictive features that harmed her mental health. Her case is the first of more than 1,500 similar lawsuits to reach trial.
On the stand, Mosseri acknowledged that users can engage in “problematic use” but rejected the idea of clinical addiction. He compared excessive scrolling to watching too much television. When asked about reports that Kaley once spent more than 16 hours on Instagram in a single day, he called it “problematic use.”
Plaintiff attorney Mark Lanier pressed Mosseri on features such as infinite scroll, autoplay and beauty filters, arguing they encourage unhealthy behavior. Internal company emails from 2019 showed executives debated banning certain face-altering filters over concerns about body image.
Mosseri denied that Instagram targets teens for profit, saying the platform earns less revenue from them than from other users. He also defended safety tools, including teen accounts with default privacy settings.
Outside the courthouse, parents who say they lost children to social media-related harms gathered overnight for seats in the courtroom, calling the trial a long-awaited moment of accountability.
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