A high-stakes federal trial against Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, kicked off on August 18, 2026, in Oakland, California. A bipartisan coalition of 29 U.S. state attorneys general is accusing the social media giant of deliberately engineering its platforms to addict children and teenagers, contributing to a youth mental health crisis, while misleading the public about the risks and improperly collecting data on underage users. The case, led by C

A mother from Essex is urgently calling on Meta and Instagram to restore an account that documented her young daughter’s fight against a rare brain tumour, after it was permanently disabled in what she describes as an automated error.Louise Paterson-Rees, who created and managed the Instagram page @Dotties_journey, says the account was wrongly flagged as belonging to a child under 13. The page, which had more than 4,000 followers, served as a detailed diary of her daughter Do