Mark Zuckerberg Apologizes To Families Of Dead Children At Online Safety Hearing

"I’m sorry for everything you’ve all gone through," the Meta CEO said.

During a Senate committee hearing on children’s online safety Wednesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized to parents who say the use of his social media platforms played a role in their children’s death or abuse.

“I’m sorry for everything you’ve all gone through,” Zuckerberg said at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington. “It’s terrible. No one should have to go through the things that your families have suffered.”

He added that Meta Platforms Inc. will “continue doing industry-leading efforts to make sure that no one has to go through the types of things that your families have had to suffer.”

Parents audibly hissed at Zuckerberg when he walked in. Many of them filled the chamber, holding up signs of their deceased children. The crowd was the “largest I’ve seen in this room,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said during the hearing.

Zuckerberg, whose social media empire includes Instagram and Facebook, was one of multiple tech CEOs grilled at the hearing, titled “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis.” The session was prompted by parents’ concerns that social media platforms played an integral role in their children’s harassment, sexual exploitation, deadly drug sale, suicide or other suffering.