Former Meta engineer says Instagram took a 'don't ask, don't tell'
approach on kids under 13
[August 20, 2026] By
BARBARA ORTUTAY
OAKLAND, California (AP) — A former engineering director at Meta who has
testified before Congress about child safety on Instagram told jurors
Wednesday at a landmark trial that the company took a “don’t ask, don’t
tell” approach on kids under 13 on its platforms.
During his second day of testimony, Arturo Béjar said Meta consistently
prioritized profits over safety in designing its products, focusing on
how often and for how long people used them, even if it was detrimental
to their mental well-being.
“If you step away from the product, they are not going to make any
money,” he said.
The trial that began Tuesday in federal court in Oakland, California,
pits Meta against the states of California, Colorado, Kentucky and New
Jersey and is expected to last about six weeks. The four states were
among 29 that sued the tech giant in 2023 over child safety and privacy
— the other 25 will go to trial later. The company also faces lawsuits
in state courts, including one underway in Tennessee.
The lawsuit accuses Meta of contributing to the youth mental health
crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing features that addict
children to its platforms and hide these harms from the public. It also
argues that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without
their parents’ consent, in violation of federal law.
Meta says users must be at least 13 years old to create an account, in
line with the law, called the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act,
or COPPA.
“The attitude in particular on Instagram was ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell,’”
Béjar said in response to a question about his perception of the
company’s attitude towards users under 13.
The company has rejected the claims and said evidence at the trial will
show its commitment to safety.
“You will hear over the course of this case a lot of important issues,
issues like teen mental health, issues like social media, issues like
how teens use social media,” Meta lawyer Paul Schmidt said Tuesday.
“Those are important issues, and they’re issues where Meta believes that
it has a responsibility. It has a responsibility to act on its own. It
has a responsibility to try to work with teens and parents in
partnership to try to address those questions.”
Plaintiffs' witness says safety was an ‘afterthought’
Béjar worked at Facebook from 2009 to 2015, attracting wide attention
for his work to combat cyberbullying. He returned from 2019 to 2021 as a
contractor to work on safety issues. He testified before Congress in
2023 about social media and the teen mental health crisis, saying that
Meta executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, knew about harms
Instagram was causing but chose not to make meaningful changes to
address them.
In his testimony Wednesday, Béjar said employee performance reviews and
compensation for those who worked on user-facing products were mostly
focused on user numbers and how long they spend with those products.
“In that context, safety was an afterthought,” he said.
[to top of second column] |
Parents hold pictures of their deceased children during a protest
against social media platforms outside the Ronald V. Dellums Federal
Building and U.S. Courthouse on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026, in Oakland,
Calif. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
 The states are seeking changes to
user experiences for Facebook and Instagram as well as financial
damages, which could include billions of dollars in penalties. In a
written statement, the office of California's attorney general said
if Meta loses, the amount of any damages would be set by the court.
“This case is about stopping Meta from offering a dangerous product
to teens, and from lying to teens, families, and the public about
the dangerousness of their platforms. The primary remedy under our
state consumer protection law is an injunction,” the statement said.
Béjar walked through Meta features he said were designed for adults
and are “inherently unsafe for teenagers.”
This includes video autoplay, which can mean teens see videos that
may cause them harm even if they don't click on them; as well as
various counters that track how many people liked, viewed or
commented on your content or how many followers you have.
Child development experts have noted teenagers are more susceptible
to social comparison than adults, so products that reward popularity
can be more harmful to their mental health.
Age verification has been criticized for not going far enough
Despite Meta's statements that it works to find kids under 13 on its
platforms and ban them, Béjar testified that he found “tens of
thousands” of kids under 13 on Instagram through his research. He
said it was “common knowledge” at the company that such young
children were on Instagram.
“Meta has one of the most sophisticated infrastructures in the world
to detect fake accounts,” he said. But despite that, he added, there
were “no goals, no metrics” to detect and check kids’ ages who were
suspected to be under 13.
Over the years, Meta has introduced features it says are designed to
make the experience safer for young people. But Béjar said these did
not work.
For instance, a tool called “Take a Break," introduced in 2021, is a
feature that is "designed to fail,” he said. First, it is a setting
that people have to turn on if they want to use it. Béjar said that
in his experience building settings, very few users actually go
through the trouble of turning them on. He compared it to an airbag
that drivers have to turn on every time they get in a car.
“A safety tool has to be on by default,” he said.
The feature can also be dismissed with a tap of a finger. If Meta
was serious about wanting users to take a break, Béjar said, it
would not be so easily swiped away.
___
AP Technology Writer Kaitlyn Huamani contributed to this story from
Los Angeles.
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