Meta will pay up to $18 billion and change how teenagers use Facebook and Instagram under a deal with nearly every U.S. state, announced Wednesday in Oakland, California, while a federal trial over those claims was still underway. BBC said it is the company’s largest payment yet over child-safety litigation, going to 48 states plus the District of Columbia and three U.S. territories, in annual instalments over ten years. Meta denied wrongdoing. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers approved the settlement Wednesday, BBC and CNBC reported. Instagram head Adam Mosseri had testified Tuesday; Mark Zuckerberg had been expected.
The first lawsuit, in 2023, came from 29 states. They said Meta designed the apps to keep children hooked, misled people about safety, and collected children’s data without parental consent. Four of those states — California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey — had been looking at civil penalties the company once put as high as $1.4 trillion; closer to trial the states talked about $200 billion. “The trial did not go well for Meta,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Wednesday. “This is a major moment to clean up an industry that has been hurting our kids.” District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb called it a “monumental public health victory.”
Under the deal, teens get a default two-hour daily limit across Instagram and Facebook that only a parent can lift, and a “night mode” that blocks notifications from midnight to 6 a.m., on by default and only a parent can switch off. There is also a “school mode” mute on notifications from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on school days, prompts after 15 minutes of continual use, hidden likes, a way to turn off autoplay, and a feed that is not driven by an algorithm. Extreme makeup filters come off. The two-hour cap would drop to one hour if TikTok, Snap, and YouTube took similar steps. Reuters reported that about $12.7 billion is guaranteed and another $5 billion is contingent on those other companies moving, and that Meta would also pay $459 million to settle separate Cambridge Analytica privacy claims. California could receive $2.2 billion. The settlement does not make Meta drop personalized recommendations or targeted ads.
Gonzalez Rogers called the agreement “a good step forward” and said she expected to approve it. “I am quite happy to not have to finish up this trial.” New Mexico is not in the deal; a judge there this month already found Meta a public nuisance and added $567 million to a $375 million jury award from March. Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, said his state would keep going: “The payouts to the states are peanuts compared to the profound harms Meta’s profit-driven addictive features have inflicted on our children. We’ll see them at trial.” Texas reached a separate settlement of about $1 billion. Meta shares were higher. The company still faces thousands of other suits from individuals, schools, and cities.
