As part of a historic court settlement that ended a trial over teen social media addiction and resolved allegations made by almost every state, Meta agreed on Wednesday to pay up to $18 billion and strengthen child-safety features on its Facebook and Instagram platforms.
The settlement put an end to a crucial case that had been pending for years and aimed to make the internet giant responsible for the harm that its platforms caused to children’s mental health. The initiative focused on elements intended to capture the interest of youth.
According to California Attorney General Rob Bonta, the agreement “institutes real change, real transparency, real protections for children and teens across the country.”
Although the firm continues to face lawsuits from people and school districts across the United States, if the arrangement is granted by the court, it will halt a wave of state action against Meta. The settlement provides funding to the states for children’s mental health services, such as digital literacy counselors and after-school or summer activities.
Advocates applauded the increased safeguards, which included deactivating features like “like” counts and setting default time restrictions.
However, Sacha Haworth, executive director of The Tech Oversight Project, stated that “we cannot truly protect all children and teens until these protections are required on every platform and are permanent—that’s something only Congress can do.”
Ten years will pass before the settlement is paid out. While numerous other states will still receive hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of the decade, California will receive the greatest amount—at least $1.5 billion.
According to Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones, the settlement “will put an end to these dangerous practices and deliver meaningful relief that will protect children from online harm.”
Meta requests that competitors take comparable precautions.
It was “building on our longstanding efforts to empower parents and support teens,” according to a blog post from Meta.
“For Meta, ensuring teens have a safe and productive experience on our platforms is an absolute imperative,” the business stated. “We collaborated with state attorneys general to establish a new industry standard because we want to get this right for parents and teens.”
The business asked rivals YouTube and TikTok to implement comparable security protocols.
The $18 billion settlement represents a small portion of Meta’s $201 billion in revenue in 2025. Meta shares increased as much as 4% during the day, but they ended the day up roughly 1%.
An ongoing legal battle involving California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey—among the 29 states that sued Meta in 2023—is terminated by the accord. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was one of the witnesses scheduled to testify in the federal trial that began last week in Oakland, California.
According to the lawsuit, Meta purposefully created elements that make kids addicted to its platforms and concealed them from the public, contributing to the juvenile mental health issue.
Additionally, the case claimed that Meta habitually collected data on children under the age of thirteen without the consent of their parents, in violation of federal statutes.
It was anticipated that the cases in additional states would go to trial later, but they have now been settled. 48 states, Washington, D.C., and a few U.S. territories are included in the settlement. The only two states left out are Florida, where the attorney general claimed the settlement was too lenient on Meta, and New Mexico, which went to trial in its case against Meta and prevailed earlier this year.
The “payouts are peanuts compared to the profound harms Meta’s profit-driven addictive features inflicted on kids,” according to a statement made by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier on X.
Time limits and restrictions on push alerts are among the new features.
As part of the proposed settlement, Meta promised to implement several safety measures, such as pauses for kids using Facebook and Instagram and two-hour daily time limitations that can only be removed with parental consent.
To stop bullying and dangerous materials about eating disorders and self-harm, the firm will remove push notifications during weekday school hours and implement “robust” age-assurance methods and “age-appropriate” content restrictions.
Parental controls and restrictions on social comparison elements like “like” counts will be more robust and user-friendly.
The effectiveness of Meta’s implementation of the safety features will be evaluated by an impartial auditor.
According to the company, states will only receive 30% of the settlement amount, or roughly $5.3 billion, if competitors YouTube and TikTok fulfill two requirements: they must implement comparable safety features, such as a one-hour daily time limit, a nighttime block, and age-assurance measures; and they must pay the same amount, divided between the two businesses.
Meta officials claimed they deliberately structured the deal with the states to encourage the rest of the sector to follow suit, but they would not comment on whether they had discussed those criteria with their rivals.
Regardless of whether other platforms follow suit, Meta stated that some of the safety precautions it will take, such as turning off extreme makeup filters and cosmetic surgery, make sense. According to the corporation, other features, such as the overnight block, will work better if they are implemented universally.
Meta will implement stronger defaults for teens’ daily time limits and the duration of “night mode” if industry peers ratify the accord.
A bipartisan partnership led the investigation.
A nonpartisan coalition of attorneys general from California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Vermont conducted the inquiry that led to the federal complaint. It came after newspaper articles, initially published in 2021 by The Wall Street Journal, revealed that the business was aware of the negative effects Instagram may have on kids’ mental health and body image.
Since then, Meta has implemented several safety features on Instagram, such as content controls and separate accounts for teens with more robust messaging and privacy protections.
However, experts and activists for kid safety, as well as several former Meta workers, have long argued that the features are merely window dressing.
Former Meta engineering director Arturo Béjar, who testified in the Oakland trial last week, described the settlement as a “significant milestone” but cautioned against seeing it as a “clear” indication that Instagram is now safe for kids.
In an interview, Béjar stated, “The agreement has a big problem in that it allows Meta to define harm.” “It’s one thing to say, ‘Yeah, you only get like two hours of alcohol or two hours of cigarettes a day,’ but it’s still as bad for you because of what’s getting delivered,” he urged the court to address that.
Advocates and parents hailed the deal as a turning point in Meta’s responsibility. The mother of the daughter, Alexandra “Owl” Hinks, who committed suicide at the age of 16, and Victoria Hinks expressed satisfaction with the terms “as long as they enforce it properly.”
She remarked outside the Oakland courthouse, “It felt like something was finally done today.” “I believe that justice is achievable.”
