Instagram Teen Safety Feature Saw 2% Adoption Rate

Instagram's top executive, Adam Mosseri, revealed in federal court on Tuesday that a key teen safety feature on the platform achieved an adoption rate of merely 2% before the company made its use mandatory. This disclosure came during the second week of a trial against Meta Platforms, the parent company of Instagram.

A coalition comprising 29 US states is seeking approximately $200 billion in damages. The lawsuit alleges that Meta intentionally designed its social media platforms to foster addiction among adolescents. Mosseri's testimony shed light on the initial user engagement with one such safety mechanism.

Initial Feature Adoption Figures

Under questioning from legal representatives for the state of Colorado, Mosseri confirmed that the "Take a Break" prompt, designed to encourage young users to pause their app usage after a set period, remained in low single-digit adoption rates before it was activated by default. He noted that this specific metric had not been publicly disclosed by the company previously.

Mosseri had stated in a December 2021 publication that over 90% of teenagers who voluntarily enabled the feature kept it active. However, in court, he clarified that this figure applied only to the small segment of users who opted in, acknowledging that most teenagers initially resisted the restriction. This limited voluntary uptake eventually led to the company implementing the default setting in September 2024, nearly three years after the feature's initial introduction. These mandatory restrictions were subsequently integrated into "Teen Accounts," which include built-in parental controls.

Prioritizing Engagement Metrics

Earlier testimonies from former Meta employees during the proceedings suggested that the company's safety tools were intentionally designed to be difficult to find and ineffective. Arturo Bejar, a former engineering director at Meta, told the court that the "Take a Break" prompt appeared engineered in a way that would lead to its practical failure.

George Volichenko, a data scientist who assessed Instagram's safety features between 2022 and 2023, testified that Meta's leadership declined to approve the default activation of a separate "Quiet Mode" for young teenagers. Volichenko indicated that automating such features would have negatively impacted user engagement metrics, a key concern for the company.

Allegations and Company Response

Four of the states involved in the lawsuit contend that Meta designed its platforms to capture the attention of young users while misleading consumers about the overall safety of its products. The broader coalition claims the company contributed to anxiety and depression among teenagers and violated federal privacy laws by improperly collecting data from children under the age of 13.

Meta continues to deny these accusations. The company maintains that its internal research does not establish a definitive causal link between adolescent social media use and declines in mental health. It also asserts that its product design does not aim to addict younger demographics. US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is expected to determine liability and potential civil penalties following the conclusion of the six-week trial. A jury is anticipated to issue an advisory verdict before the judge's final ruling.