20th August 2026 – (San Francisco) A former engineering director at Meta has testified that the company adopted a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach regarding children under 13 accessing Instagram, as a high-profile federal trial against the tech giant begins in California. Arturo Béjar, who held influential roles at Meta between 2009 and 2015 and later as a safety contractor, told jurors that Meta consciously placed profits and user engagement above safeguarding younger users.
Béjar explained that, while Meta’s official policy reflected the legal requirement for account holders to be at least 13, employees were well aware that many younger children used Instagram. He claimed that Meta—despite its advanced systems for detecting fake accounts—set “no goals, no metrics” to identify or remove underage users and that executives, including chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, knowingly allowed a focus on growth at the expense of safety. In his experience, safety was routinely treated as “an afterthought,” with staff performance reviews and remuneration tied to user numbers and usage time.
The legal action, brought by the states of California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey, argues that Meta not only failed to remove underage users but deliberately designed features addictive to teenagers and kept these risks hidden. The states contend that Meta’s platforms have contributed to a youth mental health crisis while collecting data on children in breach of federal privacy law. The lawsuit seeks both sweeping changes to how Meta’s products are run and significant financial penalties.
Meta has rejected the allegations, maintaining that it endeavours to uphold safety and complies with federal law. Company lawyer Paul Schmidt insisted Meta strives to work with both parents and young people in addressing the complicated challenges raised by social media.
Béjar further criticised features such as video autoplay and visible metrics on engagement, which he described as unsafe for teenagers due to their impact on self-esteem. He also dismissed the effectiveness of introduced safety features, such as “Take a Break,” arguing they were not proactive, could be easily bypassed, and required users to opt in rather than being activated by default. Child development experts have warned that such design choices accentuate social comparison, making teenagers especially vulnerable to online harms.