Ex-Meta staffer says 99% of teens shunned early safety tool

Madlin Mekelburg, Bloomberg News on Aug 25, 2026

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A former data scientist at Meta Platforms Inc. testified that less than 1% of teenagers were early adopters of a feature designed to get them to take a break from scrolling on Instagram.

George Volichenko — who worked on the platform’s mental well-being team from April 2022 to February 2023 — told a jury that the tool’s initial impact was “disappointing” and reflected what he saw as a lack of interest by leaders at Meta to advance safety tools that might hurt the company’s core metrics.

His testimony speaks to one of Meta’s key defenses at a high-stakes trial in which a coalition of attorneys general have accused the tech giant of exploiting youths for profit by getting them hooked on social media. The company says it is constantly improving the tools it offers to children and parents to curb problematic use of platforms including Instagram and Facebook.

“I was not happy with the limited freedom that the team was given to actually devise and test and launch features that were actually moving the needle and helping teens,” Volichenko said Monday in federal court in Oakland, California, where the trial is now in its second week.

He said one of his first tasks after joining Instagram was to study the adoption rate of the “Take a Break” tool, which prompts users to take a 10-minute break from scrolling if they spend more than a predetermined amount of time looking at the platform in a single session.

At the time, the tool required users to “opt in” to activate it, meaning it wasn’t part of the app’s default settings.

Volichenko’s team found that less than .165% of teen users enabled “Take a Break” and went on to actually take the suggested 10-minute time-out. A later review he conducted saw the figure rise to .2%, an increase that Volichenko said amounted to “a drop in the ocean.”

In 2021, when “Take a Break” was first introduced, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said on the company’s website the feature was promising.

“Early test results show that once teens set the reminders, more than 90% of them keep them on,” he wrote.

Meta has since introduced teen accounts for users under 18, which have “Take a Break” and other features turned on by default, including one aimed at reducing time spent on the app late at night.

These time management tools are not unique to teen users. Any Instagram user can enable them in their account settings. But anyone under 16 must have parental consent to disable the features on their own account.

In 2025, Meta said that 97% of teens between the ages of 13 and 15 years old keep their default restrictions on.

If the states win the trial, Meta could face astronomical penalties for violations of consumer protection and privacy laws and court orders requiring the company to change how it operates its platforms.

Meta has denied the allegations, saying it takes its responsibility to protect young users seriously.

Volichenko said he left the company in 2023, after growing disillusioned with management. He said he had started having doubts about the “genuine goal” of his team, based on pushback from leaders when his team sought to broaden the reach of time-control features.

When he raised these concerns with his manager, Volichenko said, he was told that he shouldn’t worry about the adoption figures being low for the tools “because the team exists partially to protect the company against the upcoming lawsuits.”

During cross-examination by an attorney for Meta, Volichenko acknowledged that the “Take a Break” feature was not something that every teen would find useful. Teens who opened the app several times a day, rather than spending long continuous stretches necessitating a break reminder, may still qualify as being problematic users.

Although teens who adopted the tool — and actually took a 10-minute break when it was suggested — remained under 1%, Brian Stekloff, an attorney for Meta, insisted that still constituted a meaningful number of users.

“If you do the math, that’s nonetheless hundreds of thousands of teens, right?” Stekloff said.

“I believe that is correct,” Volichenko said.

The case is People of the State of California v. Meta Platforms Inc., 23-cv-05448, US District Court, Northern District of California (Oakland).