Zuckerberg says he went to Tim Cook to discuss ‘wellbeing of teens and kids’

Chance Miller | Feb 19 2026 - 8:55 am PT

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified this week in what’s viewed as a landmark court case around the mental health impact of social media. As part of that testimony, Zuckerberg revealed that he reached out to Apple CEO Tim Cook to talk about the “wellbeing of teens and kids.”

The trial itself was brought by New Mexico against Meta, saying the social media company “failed to safeguard apps like Facebook and Instagram from online predators who targeted child users,” as explained by CNBC last week.

Originally filed in 2023, the suit claims that Meta “steered and connected users — including children — to sexually explicit, exploitative and child sex abuse materials and facilitated human trafficking” within the state.

“What we are really alleging is that Meta has created a dangerous product, a product that enables not only the targeting of children, but the exploitation of children in virtual spaces and in the real world,” Torrez told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday.

The trial is one of several significant cases involving Meta this year that could have major repercussions on the company and the broader social media industry. Experts have said the lawsuits resemble those brought against “Big Tobacco” in the 1990s, due to the alleged harm the products can have on users, and the efforts by tobacco companies to mislead the public about the negative effects.

As reported by CNBC, defense lawyers in the case asked Zuckerberg about an email exchange between Zuckerberg and Cook in February 2018.

“I thought there were opportunities that our company and Apple could be doing and I wanted to talk to Tim about that,” Zuckerberg explained. “I care about the wellbeing of teens and kids who are using our services,” he said when characterizing the content of the email.

There aren’t any additional details about the content of the exchange between Cook and Zuckerberg. Cook and Zuckerberg are widely believed to have a contentious relationship, though an exchange in February 2018 predates some of the nastier public back-and-forth. The public spat between the two largely began in March 2018, when Cook made multiple public comments about Facebook’s privacy controversies.

This is the second time Cook’s name has come up as part of this court case. In an email unearthed earlier this month, Zuckerberg suggested that Meta should conduct less research into how its platforms harm users, bizarrely citing Apple as a model to follow.

Meta and Apple largely disagree on how app age verification should be handled. Meta believes that age verification should be the responsibility of Apple and Google, not social media companies. Apple, meanwhile, believes that the responsibility of age verification should largely fall to developers. Apple says the right place to address age verification and prioritize data minimization is on a per-app level, not on the marketplace level.

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