Instagram Chief Admits Low Teen Adoption of Safety Features During Meta Trial

Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, is facing a landmark trial over allegations that it deliberately designed its platforms to hook young users despite serious mental health concerns.

Published On 26 Aug 202626 Aug 2026

The head of Instagram has acknowledged that very few teenagers utilized a key safety feature designed to curb screen addiction before it was enabled by default. This admission came as the landmark trial against Meta, the platform’s parent company, entered its second week in the United States.

Adam Mosseri testified on Tuesday in the high-profile lawsuit brought by 29 US states, which accuses Meta of designing Facebook and Instagram to be highly addictive to young people. Mosseri, who has led Instagram since 2018, refuted suggestions that the platform delayed making the “Take a Break” feature the default setting for teenagers until September 2024—nearly three years after its initial introduction.

“Most teens didn’t want it,” Mosseri stated during his testimony. “We decided to push forward with it anyway.”

The lawsuit, described by experts as the most significant legal challenge to the social media industry’s impact on youth, alleges that four states—California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey—sued Meta for creating platforms that hook young users, thereby driving anxiety, depression, and even suicide, while actively misleading consumers about platform safety.

All 29 states contend that Meta violated US federal law by improperly collecting and utilizing the personal data of children under the age of 13. The coalition is seeking approximately $200 billion in damages from the tech giant.

‘Designed to fail’

Meta has firmly rejected the accusations of targeting children for addiction, asserting that its internal research found no clear link between adolescent social media usage and diminished well-being.

During cross-examination by Jason Slothouber, an attorney for Colorado, Mosseri conceded that the usage rate for the “Take a Break” feature among teenagers was in the low single digits before Instagram implemented it as a default. The feature prompts users to close the app after a specified duration of time. In a blog post from December 2021, Mosseri had previously estimated that over 90% of teenagers who manually enabled the feature kept it active.

However, that statistic only reflected those who had chosen to turn the feature on in the first place. When questioned about whether Meta disclosed the extremely low overall adoption rate—amounting to only 1% or 2% of young accounts—Mosseri admitted that the company had not done so. He noted that safety features were later automatically enabled by default in “Teen Accounts” launched in 2024, which include parental control options.

Former Meta employees have testified that features like “Take a Break” and “Quiet Mode” were obscure and rarely used, raising doubts about the company’s genuine commitment to limiting youth screen time. Arturo Bejar, a former engineering director at Meta, described the “Take a Break” feature last week as one “designed to fail.”

Similarly, George Volichenko, a data scientist who worked on Instagram’s safety features in 2022 and 2023, testified on Monday that adoption rates for these tools were “very low.” He revealed that company leadership declined to approve making “Quiet Mode” the default for young teenagers, citing a “notable negative impact” on user engagement that automatic activation would cause.

The trial, which is expected to span six weeks, will culminate in an advisory verdict from jurors. US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will ultimately determine Meta’s liability, and if found liable, impose civil penalties and mandate operational changes to Facebook and Instagram.

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