Instagram chief admits Meta omitted teen tool use rates

Instagram head Adam Mosseri admitted in a California court on Tuesday that Meta promoted teen safety tools without disclosing low early adoption rates, as 29 US states pursue claims that the company misled the public about risks to young users.

State lawyer Jason Slothouber questioned Mosseri about Take a Break and Quiet Mode, Instagram tools launched in 2021 and 2023. Mosseri had testified to Congress on December 8, 2021, about the effects of social media on young people. A day earlier, Meta published a blog post under his name saying that more than 90 percent of teens who set reminders kept them on.

In court, Mosseri acknowledged that the figure referred to people who had already turned the reminders on. Asked whether Meta disclosed low adoption, which reached only 1 or 2 percent of accounts, he said it did not. He said one feature had a “disappointingly low usage rate” at the time but had since improved.

Mosseri also said the safety features were later turned on by default in Teen Accounts, a product with parental controls launched in 2024. He could not recall whether Meta had ever disclosed the percentage of teen accounts with parental controls turned on. He is expected to continue testifying on Wednesday.

Other witnesses have testified that Meta knew the tools were largely ineffective. Internal Meta documents shown to jurors said Take a Break reached an adoption rate of 1.8 percent, while Quiet Mode, which silences late-night notifications, reached 8.7 percent.

Francesco Fogu, Meta's director of product design at Instagram, said Tuesday that he was not aware of those numbers but acknowledged that the company “knew adoption rates would be lower” if the tools were not turned on by default.

Former Meta engineering director Arturo Bejar testified last week that Take a Break was “designed to fail.” George Volichenko, a data scientist who worked on Instagram safety features in 2022 and 2023, said Monday that adoption was “very low and disappointing” and “a drop in the ocean.” He said Meta leadership did not approve turning on Quiet Mode by default for younger teenagers, and that making the safety features default settings would have had a “notable negative impact” on user engagement.

Meta has more than three billion users worldwide and earns advertising revenue from time spent on its apps. The states are seeking about $200 billion in penalties. The trial entered its second week on Monday and is expected to run through late September. Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is also expected to testify, though the timing is unclear.