Meta sold teen safety tools that almost nobody used

Adam Mosseri, who runs Instagram for Meta, told a California court on Tuesday that the company promoted teen safety features without disclosing how few people actually used them.

Economic Times and AFP reported that Take a Break, a scroll reminder launched in 2021, reached about 1.8% adoption in internal figures shown to jurors. Quiet Mode, which mutes late-night notifications, reached about 8.7%. A 2021 Meta blog post Mosseri authored had highlighted that once teens set reminders, more than 90% kept them on. That statistic covered only people who turned the tool on. Overall uptake was closer to 1-2%.

Mosseri said usage has improved since the tools were later switched on by default inside Teen Accounts, which launched in 2024. He could not recall whether Meta had disclosed what share of teen accounts have parental controls on. Former staff have testified that leadership resisted default settings because they would hurt engagement. Twenty-nine US states accuse Meta of designing products to hook children while downplaying harm. They want roughly $200 billion in penalties. Mosseri continues on Wednesday. Mark Zuckerberg is also expected to testify.

India has one of the world's largest young Instagram populations, and the same product decisions travel here even when the lawsuit is American.

A safety tool that almost nobody finds is a press release, not a safeguard. The court fight is about whether Meta knew that and sold the story anyway.

Mosseri's remaining testimony, then Zuckerberg's calendar, and whether the judge treats low adoption as a design choice or a failed experiment.