Lori Schott, a mother from rural Colorado, said she stared down Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg as he walked into court in Los Angeles on Wednesday to testify in a landmark trial regarding social media addiction.
Schott lost her 18-year-old daughter, Annalee, to suicide in 2020. She believes the content Annalee saw on social media platforms “destroyed” her mental health.
“I made eye contact with him for quite a long time,” Schott said of Zuckerberg. “I was not backing down.”
Schott is not a plaintiff in the case where Zuckerberg testified on Wednesday, but is among more than 2,000 individuals who have similar personal injury lawsuits pending regarding social media addiction and harm.
The case underway in Los Angeles centers on a 20-year-old woman, identified by the initials KGM, who says her use of social media throughout her childhood negatively affected her mental health, contributing to depression and suicidal thoughts. It is considered a bellwether trial that could indicate how other similar lawsuits related to social media harm, like Schott’s, could play out.
Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, was named as a defendant alongside Google-owned YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat. TikTok and Snapchat both settled the lawsuit out of court.
Last month, Meta warned investors that its mounting legal battles over youth safety could “significantly impact” its 2026 financial results. Attorneys for more than 100,000 individual arbitration claimants have “sent mass arbitration demands relating to ‘social media addiction'” since late 2024, the company said in a 2026 10-K, which warned that potential damages in certain cases could reach into the “high tens of billions of dollars.”
In a statement, Stephanie Otway, a Meta spokesperson, said: “We strongly disagree with these allegations and are confident the evidence will show our longstanding commitment to supporting young people.” Otway highlighted changes the company has made over the past decade, including Teen Accounts, which give parents tools to manage their teens’ accounts.
Google declined to comment. TikTok did not respond to a request for comment. A Snapchat spokesperson said in a statement: “The Parties are pleased to have been able to resolve this matter in an amicable manner.”
On Wednesday, parents showed up hours before the courthouse opened in hopes of getting a seat inside. Many of them had personal stories about how they believed social media use harmed their children.
“We face a lot of stigma from people telling us we’re bad parents,” said Amy Neville, another parent who attended to show her support. She said that once the evidence comes out in the trial, she believes “the tide will turn, and the general public will be on board with us.”
“It is by design that social media is tearing their family apart,” Neville said.
On the stand, Zuckerberg said that teens represent less than 1% of Meta’s ad revenue and that most teens don’t have disposable income, so it’s not especially valuable to advertisers to reach them.
Zuckerberg said it’s in Meta’s best interest to create a platform that inspires people and makes them want to stick around for the long term.
“If people aren’t happy with a service, eventually over time they’ll stop using it and use something better,” he said.
Sarah Gardner said that regardless of the outcome of the trial, she hopes it raises awareness about how the social media companies, and specifically Zuckerberg, have been operating. Gardner is the CEO of the Heat Initiative, an advocacy group that pressures Big Tech companies to make their platforms safer for kids. She was at the courthouse with the parents who believe they have been affected.
Gardner said she’s hopeful the trial will empower more people to say, “I don’t want to be on Instagram anymore.”
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