Meta, owner of Instagram and Facebook, agreed to pay up to $17.1 billion and implement new safety restrictions for teenagers on its platforms, ending a historic lawsuit filed by attorneys general from dozens of American states. The federal trial was held in Oakland, California, and investigated accusations that the company deliberately developed addictive features for teenagers and misled the public about platform risks. The lawsuit originated from a bipartisan investigation launched after Wall Street Journal reports in 2021 revealed that the company itself already knew internally about the harm Instagram caused to teenagers' mental health, especially girls.
The agreement covers 47 American states, the District of Columbia and territories such as Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands. Payments will be distributed to participating states over a decade, according to each state's population. Meta did not admit any wrongdoing in the case.
Florida, Texas and New Mexico were left out of the collective agreement. New Mexico had already won its own lawsuit against Meta with estimated damages in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Texas separately negotiated a $1 billion settlement, including new safety features for minors. Florida maintains its own state lawsuit against the company, and the new restrictions will not automatically apply to its residents while that dispute is ongoing.
Among the main changes planned are a default limit of two combined hours of daily usage across Instagram and Facebook for users under 18, blocking access between midnight and 6am unless parents authorize otherwise, and silencing notifications during school hours. The agreement also calls for hiding like counts on teenagers' posts, limitations on filters that alter appearance, and the company responding to 90% of safety alerts involving teenagers within six hours. Some experts and victims' families criticized that limiting usage time doesn't solve the underlying problem, since teenagers can continue receiving harmful content through the same recommendation systems. Attorneys general, however, celebrated the outcome as one of the biggest consumer protection victories since the billion-dollar tobacco settlements in the 1990s.
