Meta refused to switch a teen safety tool on by default, jury told

Someone inside Instagram proposed switching its break reminder on by default. The proposal was rejected because the cost to the app’s core metrics was not desirable.

George Volichenko, a former Meta data scientist, told that to a jury in Oakland this week. Mike Swift reported the testimony from the courtroom for MLex.

Volichenko worked on Instagram’s mental wellbeing team from April 2022 to February 2023. One of his first tasks was to measure how many teenagers used “Take a Break”, which prompts a 10-minute pause once a session passes a set length.

The answer was almost nobody

Roughly two in every 1,000 weekly teenage users took up the excessive-use features, Volichenko testified. He called that very low, almost negligible.

His team found fewer than 0.165% of teenage users switched the tool on and then took the break, Madlin Mekelburg reported for Bloomberg. A later review put it at 0.2%, which he called a drop in the ocean.

At the time, the tool required users to opt in. It was not part of the app’s default settings.

Why it stayed opt-in

Making it opt-out was considered and refused, on the grounds that the trade-off to core metrics was not desirable. In plain terms, Instagram expected to lose audience.

Volichenko described the internal reasoning to the jury. There was a lot of fear that an opt-out safety feature would produce large declines in those metrics, he said.

If that happened, he testified, multiple levels of leadership would have to report it upwards and explain why they were tanking the numbers.

The number Meta published instead

Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, wrote on Meta’s website in 2021 that early results were promising. Once teens set the reminders, more than 90% of them keep them on, he wrote.

Both things are true at once. Almost everyone who turned the tool on kept it, and almost nobody turned it on.

An allegation about how documents were marked

Volichenko also told the jury that it was standard practice at Instagram to put an attorney-client privilege label on essentially anything the company would not want the public to see.

That is sworn testimony from one former employee rather than a finding, and Meta has not responded to it publicly. Swift called it one of two significant moments in the evidence.

What his manager told him

He raised the low adoption figures internally. He was told not to worry, because the team existed partly to protect the company against the coming lawsuits.

His manager also told him to announce the findings as improvements to the tool, Carly Nairn reported for Courthouse News. Volichenko left in 2023.

Meta’s lawyer got something back

Brian Stekloff, cross-examining, put the same statistic the other way round. If you do the math, that is nonetheless hundreds of thousands of teens, he said. Volichenko agreed.

Stekloff established that the tool would not suit every teenager. Someone who opens the app many times a day, rather than scrolling in long stretches, may still be a problematic user and would never trigger a reminder.

Then he asked whether this had been a sham communication.

“No, it was accurate,” Volichenko replied. “Our goal was reached. I just did not think it was an ambitious enough goal.” Swift reported the exchange.

That answer matters. The states’ own witness declined to say Meta had lied about the tool, and objected instead to the size of the target it set itself.

He is there under subpoena

Volichenko is testifying under subpoena by the states and is not being paid for it, Swift reported. He has not appeared in any of the previous addictive-design trials where Meta was a defendant.

Meta has since changed the setting

This is the company’s strongest fact and nobody disputes it. Meta introduced teen accounts for under-18s, with Take a Break and other tools switched on by default, including one aimed at late-night use.

Anyone under 16 needs parental consent to turn those features off. In 2025, Meta said 97% of teenagers aged 13 to 15 keep the default restrictions on.

The states are not arguing about what the app does now. They are arguing about what Meta said while it did something else.

The default is the whole argument

Arturo Bejar is a former Meta engineer and was the states’ first witness. He told the jury last week that Take a Break was “designed to fail”.

It failed because most people never change that setting, Bejar said, and because the reminder could be snoozed away. He compared the design to having to switch on an airbag every time you get into a car.

What the case actually is

Chief US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers set out the scope from the bench. The trial is not about the content on the platforms, which Section 230 shields.

“The point of this trial is that Meta allegedly lied and misrepresented that the features are addictive,” she said. Had Meta said nothing, there would be no case.

Four states are bringing it: California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey. They say Meta breached the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and made deceptive statements that misled the public.

The scale of it

An eight-person jury will give an advisory verdict, and Rogers decides the case and any penalties. Those could reach $200bn, Nairn reported, alongside orders changing how Meta runs teen accounts.

Meta has said the four states are seeking $1.4 trillion in penalties, a figure the company put on the record before the trial began.

This is the first case in litigation covering more than 3,000 active claims, and another 25 states go to trial later. Proceedings opened on 17 August and should run six to eight weeks.

Europe is settling this by rule instead

Oakland is arguing about whether a company can be liable for shipping a safety tool almost nobody found. Europe is answering the question before it reaches a courtroom.

The European Commission has charged TikTok with failing to protect children under the Digital Services Act. Australia has banned under-16s outright, and a watchdog says Meta has paid influencers to campaign against those bans.

What happens next

Volichenko finished on Tuesday. Giving up a large salary at Meta was probably the hardest thing he has ever done, he said, and the wellbeing team was not nearly as effective as it could have been with more agency and freedom.

Francesco Fogu, Instagram’s director of product design, took the stand next. Mosseri is also expected this week.

The case is People of the State of California v. Meta Platforms Inc., 23-cv-05448, in the Northern District of California.