Instagram chief admits promoting teen safety tool while hiding its low adoption

Adam Mosseri, the Meta executive who oversees Instagram, acknowledged in a California court on Tuesday (Aug 25) that the company promoted new safety tools for teenagers without disclosing how few users had adopted them during early testing.

The admission came in a major trial in which 29 US states have accused Meta of deliberately designing its platforms to keep children engaged while collecting their data and misleading the public about the risks. The trial, which entered its second week this week, is expected to continue through September.

Instagram's safety tools had low adoption

State lawyers questioned Mosseri over two Instagram features designed to help teenagers manage their time on the platform: Take a Break, introduced in 2021, and Quiet Mode, launched in 2023.

Internal Meta documents presented in court showed that Take a Break had an adoption rate of just 1.8 per cent, while Quiet Mode stood at 8.7 per cent.

Mosseri acknowledged that the company did not publicly disclose the overall low adoption rate, which was reportedly as low as 1 to 2 per cent of accounts during the early period.

He said the situation later changed after similar protections were incorporated into Teen Accounts, which Meta introduced in 2024 and which include parental controls. "This is one feature with a disappointingly low usage rate, which since this time has significantly improved," Mosseri said.

Mosseri's 90 per cent claim questioned

The testimony also focused on a Meta blog post written by Mosseri and published on December 7, 2021, one day before he appeared before Congress to discuss social media's impact on young people.

The post said: "Early test results show that once teens set the reminders, more than 90% of them keep them on."

Under questioning, Mosseri acknowledged that the 90 per cent figure referred only to users who had already activated the feature and continued using it. It did not indicate that 90 per cent of teenagers had adopted the tool.

Mosseri could not recall whether Meta had ever disclosed the percentage of teen accounts with parental controls activated.

Notably, Meta's advertising-driven business model benefits when users spend more time on its platforms.

Former employees say tools were ineffective

Other witnesses have also questioned whether the safety features worked as intended. Former Meta engineering director Arturo Bejar testified that Take a Break was, in his experience, "a feature that's designed to fail."

George Volichenko, a former Instagram data scientist, described adoption as "very low and disappointing" and "a drop in the ocean".

He told the court that Meta leadership did not approve making Quiet Mode the default for younger teenagers. He said this limited usage because the feature was difficult to find and that automatically enabling it could have had a "notable negative impact" on user engagement.

Francesco Fogu, Meta's director of product design at Instagram, also testified that adoption would be lower when such features were not activated by default.

Stakes could reach $200 billion

The case could have major consequences for Meta. If the states prevail, they are seeking around $200 billion in penalties. A verdict against Meta could also force significant changes to how the company designs and operates its products.

Mosseri is expected to continue testifying on Wednesday. Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is also expected to take the stand, although the timing of his testimony has not been disclosed.