COMMENT | The proceedings are being held in the United States and Australia but the media coverage is reverberating around the world, predicting how social media will evolve in the next few years.

In a US Court in Oakland on Tuesday, it was alleged that Meta (which owns Facebook) knowingly hooked and exploited children, with accusations that the company deliberately made Instagram and Facebook addictive to young users.

Meta “exploited how kids’ brains work”, California prosecutor Megan O’Neill said in opening arguments, painting Meta’s business model as one built to “hook the users, hold them for as long as they can, harvest their data, and then hide the truth from the public.”

Meanwhile, 29 US states have grouped to...