Meta refused to switch a teen safety tool on by default, jury told

Former Instagram data scientist George Volichenko testified that only about 0.2% of teenage users ever activated the “Take a Break” reminder, and virtually none did so when it remained an opt-in feature. Meta rejected proposals to make the tool default because internal models predicted significant drops in core engagement metrics. The company later switched teen accounts to default-on settings, requiring parental consent for users under 16 to disable them.