Meta has agreed to an $18 billion settlement with 48 US states, the District of Columbia and three US territories over claims that Facebook and Instagram harmed children.
A California judge approved the settlement, which marks Meta’s largest payment to date over child safety litigation. The company has denied any wrongdoing and said the payment will be made in annual instalments over 10 years.
The case was originally filed in 2023 by 29 states, which accused Meta of violating federal and state child privacy laws and knowingly allowing children to use its platforms. State lawyers argued during the trial that Meta knew millions of 11- and 12-year-olds were using Instagram and Facebook but did little to keep them off the platforms.
The states also presented millions of internal Meta documents, including research, employee emails and chat logs. One internal Instagram research document described teenagers as having an “addict’s narrative about use”.
The settlement goes beyond a financial payment. Meta will introduce a series of mandatory changes aimed at limiting how teenagers use Facebook and Instagram.
Teen users will have a default two-hour daily limit across the two platforms. The limit can only be disabled with parental permission. A new night mode will also block notifications between midnight and 6am by default, with parents or guardians controlling whether it can be turned off.
Other measures include a school mode that mutes notifications between 8am and 3pm on school days, prompts after 15 minutes of continuous use and further notifications at 60 and 90 minutes. Teenagers will also be able to choose a feed that is not driven by an algorithm and turn off video autoplay.
Likes will be hidden from teen profiles and the profiles they interact with, while extreme make-up filters will no longer be available to them.
The two-hour daily limit could eventually fall to one hour if other major platforms, including TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube, introduce similar restrictions.
The settlement comes after a separate ruling in New Mexico last month found Meta had created a “public nuisance” and ordered the company to pay almost $1 billion in combined fines.
For US regulators and state officials, the Meta settlement could therefore have implications beyond Facebook and Instagram. California Attorney General Rob Bonta called the agreement a blueprint for the wider social media industry, urging other platforms to adopt similar protections.
Meta has also called on its competitors to implement the same measures.
The settlement does not establish that Meta legally caused the alleged harms, as the company has denied wrongdoing. But it does impose concrete changes to how its platforms will operate for teenagers, potentially shifting the focus of the debate from whether social media companies should act to how much control they should have over young users’ online experience.
Source: BBC
