Tennessee puts Instagram's compelling design under scrutiny as Meta engages in a jury trial lasting seven weeks.

      Meta faced trial in Nashville on Monday regarding Tennessee's claim that it designed Instagram to encourage compulsive scrolling among teenagers, marking one of the initial state cases to present the issue of addictive design to a jury. Jury selection commenced on July 20 and the trial is anticipated to last around seven weeks, part of a broader surge of litigation where a federal judge recently allowed states to argue that Meta has engaged children through its applications.

      Tennessee's attorney general, Jonathan Skrmetti, argues that the company intentionally developed features like autoplay, Reels, notifications, and disappearing posts to enhance engagement among minors, while downplaying the associated risks to the public. The lawsuit also claims that Meta suppressed internal research linking Instagram to harm for young people, a charge that also appears in a separate $1.4 trillion lawsuit filed by four other states set for trial in California in August.

      The state asserts that internal documents reveal that executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, were alerted about the app's impact on teenagers but responded slowly. Meta counters this interpretation, stating that its research has been inaccurately characterized in various filings nationwide.

      The case is being tried in two stages. Initially, a jury will determine if Meta violated Tennessee's consumer-protection law, followed by a second stage that will consider penalties and any potential order to redesign the app. This framework allows the state to differentiate between the issue of wrongdoing and the more complex challenge of crafting remedies, providing the jury with a more focused initial task than the extensive complaint may imply.

      Under this statute, the state is pursuing damages of up to $1,000 for each infraction, a total that could rise significantly given the vast number of teenage users on Instagram. Tennessee is also requesting the court to mandate modifications to features it believes were created to foster habit-forming behavior. Meta has denied these accusations, with a spokesperson stating, “We’ve spent a decade building safe, age-appropriate defaults for teens alongside simple tools for parents to set the right boundaries for their family.”

      The company argues that the lawsuit targets user-generated content rather than the platform's design itself, asserting that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects it from liability on those grounds. The determination of how the Nashville jury interprets this distinction could have significant implications for the numerous state cases awaiting resolution behind this one.

      Tennessee’s lawsuit, initiated in Nashville, is part of a series of state actions that gained momentum after a coalition of attorneys general filed against Meta in 2023. Skrmetti’s office has framed the trial as an examination of whether consumer-protection law can address the way a social network is constructed rather than just the content presented on it.

      Meta arrives in court on a streak of losses. In March, a jury in New Mexico ordered the company to pay $375 million in a separate child-safety case, and that same month, a Los Angeles jury found Meta, alongside YouTube, liable for negatively impacting a young woman’s mental health. Meta has announced plans to appeal the Los Angeles verdict and insists that no court has deemed its products to be defectively designed. The company also highlights its years of investment in parental control tools and dedicated teen accounts that limit contact with younger users.

      International regulators are advancing on similar issues. The European Commission has been investigating the concept of addictive design on Facebook and Instagram under the Digital Services Act, focusing on features like infinite scrolling, autoplay, and notifications targeted at children.

      The timing is precarious for Meta, as the Nashville trial coincides with the larger California case which has already seen the court reject a dismissal of the states' primary claims and scheduled arguments regarding damages for August. The jury's perspective on Instagram’s design remains uncertain. A ruling in favor of Tennessee could provide a framework for other states to follow, while a win for the defense could undermine the recent momentum gained by plaintiffs from previous unfavorable verdicts.