Zuckerberg's approval is underwater. Meta's stock keeps climbing.

Today’s Focus

Meta Platforms is on track for another record year even as its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, remains one of the least-liked figures in American tech, according to a BBC report published this week by North America technology correspondent Lily Jamali.

At Meta Connect last month, Zuckerberg spent nearly an hour pitching a new agentic chatbot called Muse, several smart glasses lines, and a wrist-worn AI gadget that behaves like a Tamagotchi. The BBC noted he barely mentioned Facebook or Instagram, the social platforms that built the $2 trillion company.

The silence came against a backdrop of litigation. Meta is defending itself in a wave of lawsuits from state attorneys general, school districts and personal injury firms that accuse the company of deliberately engineering Instagram and Facebook to be addictive to minors.

Internal emails, product documents and whistleblower testimony surfaced in those cases have become central exhibits. Former Meta safety researcher Arturo Béjar testified to a Senate subcommittee in 2023 that executives, including Zuckerberg, were warned about teen harm and declined to act.

Public sentiment has not caught up with the stock price. A Pew Research Center survey last year found roughly two-thirds of U.S. adults hold an unfavorable view of Zuckerberg, worse than ratings for Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Sundar Pichai in the same poll.

Investors see a different company. Meta’s AI advertising tools, Reels monetization and spending discipline have driven revenue growth above 20% year-over-year in recent quarters, according to the company’s SEC filings, and the stock has roughly doubled since the start of 2024.

The Debate

Supporters argue

Meta and its allies contend that the business is thriving because the products work and because the company has invested heavily in youth safety. In a statement to the BBC, Meta said it has rolled out more than 50 tools for teens and parents, including default private accounts for users under 16 and nighttime notification limits.

Zuckerberg told developers at Connect that “building is an act of love” and framed Meta’s AI push as a continuation of its mission to connect people. Supporters on Wall Street point to results: analyst Mark Shmulik of Bernstein has repeatedly described Meta as the “best-positioned” of the mega-cap platforms on AI monetization.

Industry group NetChoice, which Meta funds, argues that state laws targeting algorithmic feeds for minors violate the First Amendment and would gut tools parents actually use. The group has won preliminary injunctions against age-verification statutes in California, Ohio and Arkansas.

Conservative commentators including the Wall Street Journal editorial board have warned that forcing platforms to redesign feeds for teens risks pushing young users to less-moderated apps based overseas, like TikTok’s parent ByteDance.

Critics argue

A bipartisan coalition of 42 state attorneys general sued Meta in federal court in Oakland in 2023, alleging the company knowingly designed features such as infinite scroll, autoplay and push notifications to exploit adolescent brain development. The suit, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Colorado’s Phil Weiser, remains active.

Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who chairs the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on consumer protection, said after Béjar’s testimony that Meta had engaged in a “pattern of deception.” Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), co-author of the Kids Online Safety Act, has called Meta’s internal research “damning.”

Advocacy groups including the Tech Oversight Project and Fairplay argue the company’s recent safety announcements are public relations rather than product change. Fairplay executive director Josh Golin told the BBC that teen defaults can be reversed in “a few taps,” calling the rollouts “cosmetic.”

Plaintiffs’ attorney Previn Warren of Motley Rice, who represents families in the multidistrict litigation in the Northern District of California, has argued in filings that Meta prioritized engagement metrics over documented harms to users as young as 10.

What the experts say

Peer-reviewed evidence on social media and youth mental health is mixed but trending toward documented harm for heavy users. A 2023 meta-analysis in JAMA Pediatrics by researchers at the University of Calgary found a small but statistically significant association between social media use and depressive symptoms in adolescents, strongest among girls.

The American Psychological Association issued a 2023 health advisory, authored by a panel chaired by Mitch Prinstein, noting that the design features of platforms, not screen time alone, drive risk. The APA stopped short of calling social media uniformly harmful.

The Pew Research Center reported in 2024 that 58% of U.S. teens use Instagram daily, up from 52% in 2022, and that teen trust in tech companies has declined across every major platform.

On the business side, eMarketer analyst Jasmine Enberg has noted that Meta captures roughly 20% of global digital ad spending, second only to Google. Financial-markets researcher Aswath Damodaran of NYU Stern has written that Meta’s AI capital expenditure, projected above $60 billion this year, is a bet investors have so far rewarded despite regulatory overhangs.

By the Numbers

$2 trillion: approximate market capitalization of Meta Platforms as of this week, per BBC reporting.
66%: share of U.S. adults with an unfavorable view of Mark Zuckerberg in a 2024 Pew Research Center survey.
42: number of state attorneys general who joined the 2023 federal lawsuit against Meta over youth harm, per the California Attorney General’s office.
58%: share of U.S. teens who use Instagram daily, according to Pew Research Center 2024 data.
~20%: Meta’s share of global digital ad spending, per eMarketer analyst Jasmine Enberg.
$60 billion+: Meta’s projected 2025 capital expenditure on AI infrastructure, per filings cited by NYU’s Aswath Damodaran.
50+: teen and parent safety tools Meta says it has launched, per the company’s statement to the BBC.