Asked to comment on complaints from inside the company that not enough was being done to verify whether children under 13 were using the platform, the 41-year-old head of Meta, which also owns Facebook and WhatsApp, said on Wednesday that improvements had been made, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.
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But “I always wish that we could have gotten there sooner,” he added.
Zuckerberg was the most hotly anticipated witness in the California trial, the first in a series of cases that could set legal precedent for thousands of lawsuits filed by American families against social media platforms.
The trial marked the first time the multibillionaire addressed the safety of his world-dominating platforms directly before a jury.
Zuckerberg was very reserved at first, but then he grew animated, showing signs of annoyance, shaking his head, and waving his hands as he turned towards the jury.
The 12 jurors in Los Angeles heard the increasingly testy testimony as plaintiff lawyer Mark Lanier pressed Zuckerberg on age verification and his guiding philosophy for making decisions at the vast social media company he controls.
The trial is set to last until late March, when the jury will decide whether Google-owned YouTube and Meta’s Instagram bear responsibility for the mental health problems suffered by Kaley GM, a 20-year-old California resident who has been a heavy social media user since childhood.
Kaley GM started using YouTube at age six, Instagram at nine, then TikTok and Snapchat.
Under-13s are not allowed on Instagram, and Lanier pressed Zuckerberg on the fact that Kaylee had easily signed up for the platform despite rules that were buried deep in the user agreement, which he said a child could not be expected to read.
