Meta declined to enable a teen safety feature by default, the jury was informed.

      A suggestion was made by an individual within Instagram to enable its break reminder feature by default. This proposal was declined due to the anticipated negative impact on the app's core metrics. George Volichenko, a former data scientist at Meta, shared this information during a jury trial in Oakland this week. Mike Swift reported his courtroom testimony for MLex.

      Volichenko was part of Instagram’s mental wellbeing team from April 2022 until February 2023. One of his initial responsibilities was to assess the number of teenagers using the “Take a Break” feature, which prompts users to pause for 10 minutes after exceeding a certain session length. The finding was that very few teenagers utilized this feature.

      Testifying, Volichenko indicated that only about two in every 1,000 teenage weekly users engaged with the excessive-use features, which he deemed very low and almost insignificant. According to Madlin Mekelburg's report for Bloomberg, fewer than 0.165% of teenage users activated the feature and subsequently took a break. A later review suggested this figure could be as high as 0.2%, which Volichenko remarked was comparable to a drop in the ocean. At the time, users had to opt in to use the tool, as it was not set as a default option in the app.

      The decision to keep it as opt-in was considered and ultimately rejected due to concerns that opting out would adversely affect key metrics. In simpler terms, Instagram anticipated a reduction in its audience. Volichenko elaborated on the internal rationale to the jury, expressing that there was significant fear that an opt-out safety feature would lead to considerable declines in these metrics. If such a decline occurred, he stated, multiple leadership levels would need to report and clarify the reasons behind the plummeting numbers.

      Instead, Meta published a different narrative. Adam Mosseri, Instagram's head, wrote on Meta's website in 2021 that early results were encouraging, claiming that over 90% of teens who set the reminders kept them activated. Both statements can be true: nearly everyone who turned the feature on maintained it, yet almost no one initially opted for it.

      Volichenko also informed the jury that it was common practice at Instagram to label documents with attorney-client privilege whenever the company wished to conceal information from the public. This testimony comes from one former employee and has not received a public response from Meta. Swift considered it a key moment in the evidence presented.

      Internally, Volichenko brought up the low adoption rates but was reassured that the team's purpose included safeguarding the company from potential lawsuits. He was advised by his manager to frame their findings as improvements to the feature, as reported by Carly Nairn for Courthouse News. Volichenko departed from the company in 2023.

      In cross-examination, Meta's lawyer Brian Stekloff presented the statistic from a different angle, noting that the figure represented hundreds of thousands of teenagers. Volichenko confirmed this. Stekloff acknowledged that the tool wouldn’t be suitable for every teenager, mentioning that users who opened the app multiple times each day – rather than using it in longer sessions – could still struggle with excessive use and might not receive reminders.

      When asked whether this could be deemed a misleading communication, Volichenko responded, “No, it was accurate. Our goal was reached. I just did not think it was an ambitious enough goal,” according to Swift’s report. This statement is significant as it indicates that even the state's own witness did not claim Meta lied about the feature, but rather critiqued the target it set.

      Volichenko is testifying under subpoena from the states and is not receiving any payment for his testimony, as noted by Swift. He has not participated in any earlier trials regarding addictive design where Meta was involved.

      Meta has since modified the feature, which is an undisputed fact. The company introduced teenage accounts for users under 18, with features like Take a Break enabled by default and others aimed at reducing late-night usage. Users under 16 must have parental consent to disable these features. In a statement from 2025, Meta mentioned that 97% of teenagers aged 13 to 15 retain the default restrictions.

      The states are not contesting the current functionality of the app. Instead, they aim to address what Meta communicated while managing the app differently.

      The crux of the matter lies in the default settings. Arturo Bejar, a former Meta engineer and the first witness for the states, told the jury last week that the Take a Break feature was “designed to fail.” He argued it failed because most people do not change those settings and the reminders can easily be snoozed, likening it to requiring users to activate an airbag each time they enter a vehicle.

      Chief US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers clarified the trial's scope from the bench, stating it does not involve platform content protected by Section 230. “The point of this