The social media company Meta and states suing it have agreed to settle a landmark federal child safety lawsuit in a move that state attorneys general hope will be a turning point for youth safety on social media platforms.
California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey represented a larger consortium of states that alleged in the suit that Meta designed its apps — Facebook and Instagram — to be addictive to kids and knew about the risks those platforms posed, but hid that information from the public.
In addition to claims that Meta broke state consumer protection laws, the states accused Meta of violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act by collecting data about children under the age of 13. Meta has a policy of not allowing kids under 13 on its platforms, but some skirt the rule by registering with false birth dates.
The settlement requires Meta to pay up to $17 billion in penalties to the states over 10 years and to make significant changes to how its platforms operate so that they are safer for minors.
"Today, we have secured a settlement with Meta that will make social media less dangerous for our kids and make a world of a difference for children and their families," California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement.
"Meta has agreed to make massive transformations that will reduce the risk of harm from its platforms — and will do it within months," he added.
Meta's chief legal officer, C.J. Mahoney, said in a statement that the framework was groundbreaking and "will empower parents to easily manage how their children access our platforms."
"But its success depends on all other social media platforms following Meta's lead," he said, making an explicit call for TikTok and YouTube to implement this same framework.
Representatives from Google (which owns YouTube), TikTok and Snap, which the settlement identified alongside the others as a "core" member of the industry, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Meta has denied the allegations brought by the states.
Bonta's office also said Meta had agreed to make changes to its platforms, including a default time limit of two hours for users under 18 and a nighttime block between midnight and 6 a.m., both of which can be lifted only by a parent; default night and schooltime notification blocks; a ban on displaying the number of "likes" or reactions to posts made by minors; a ban on cosmetic surgery image filters for minors; and an option for young users to have a "non-personalized feed" that is not run by an algorithm targeting them with content.
Meta must also bring on an independent auditor with "expansive access to information and resources" and the right to communicate with the attorneys general, the announcement said, and would also be subject to an injunction "prohibiting it from making further false, misleading, or deceptive statements around its safety features."
"I am proud to deliver this settlement that addresses the concerns at the core of our lawsuit and institutes real change, real transparency, and real enforceable protections for children on Facebook and Instagram — right now, no more waiting," Bonta wrote.
Some of the provisions in the settlement are triggered to tighten if YouTube, TikTok and Snap agree to similar steps. For instance, the two-hour default on-app time for minors would drop to one hour. The amount Meta pays ratchets up if others join the framework as well, an apparent move to cushion the competitive blow if they don't.
The settlement says a portion of the funds would go toward things like youth mental health programs, after-school programs and crisis intervention services. States including Vermont, Michigan, North Carolina, Indiana and South Dakota are set to receive parts of the settlement.
Nora Freeman Engstrom, a law professor at Stanford University, said both sides appear to have gained from the choice to settle. Some of the platform changes that Meta has agreed to, and that Meta and the states are hoping others will also adopt, would have been hard to obtain through legislation, she said.
Meta, meanwhile, is on the hook for an amount of money that she called "not exactly pocket change, but it's hardly a body blow." The company reported a net profit of around $16 billion last quarter.
But the settlement sends a signal. "Meta is clearly signaling that it would like this litigation behind it. But this is not game over," she said.
This case is one of thousands against social media companies, including Meta, for alleged harms to the mental health of minors, and experts say many of those cases will not be affected by this outcome.
Matthew P. Bergman, the founding attorney at the Social Media Victims Law Center, which has represented plaintiffs in cases against social media companies, applauded the settlement as a "watershed moment" in holding Meta accountable.
"But our work is far from over," he said in a written statement. "We will continue fighting for the individual families whose children will never come home, and for those still struggling with mental health crises caused by these platforms. Accountability to the public is important — but accountability to the families harmed must remain our focus."
The trial started last week in federal court in Oakland, Calif., and was expected to run through early October. But the settlement announcement comes only midway through the trial's second week.
Key testimony came from insiders who worked at Meta, including whistleblower Arturo Béjar, who testified that the company culture was obsessed with increasing user numbers and that Meta's internal studies showed that young users were exposed to harmful experiences at much higher rates than the company acknowledged publicly.
Tuesday, the states brought Instagram head Adam Mosseri to the stand and questioned him about the effectiveness of some features added to Instagram to try to keep teens from using it too much. They accused Mosseri of publicly touting the use of one of those safety features — called "Take a Break," a feature that nudged kids to close the app — when the reality was that it had very limited uptake by teens.
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California approved the settlement hours after it was filed.
The case is part of a wave of lawsuits that has been compared to litigation against tobacco companies in the 1990s. Those suits led to record settlements, changes to the way the companies operate and a shift in the public discourse about cigarettes.
The case was consolidated from a series of lawsuits by attorneys general around the U.S. against Meta, and the settlement resolves the cases and claims of 51 of those, according to the California Attorney General's Office.
