Meta reached a settlement resolving claims from 51 states and territories that could require the company to pay up to $17.1 billion in penalties and change how Facebook and Instagram operate for younger users.
The agreement resolves claims that Meta designed Instagram and Facebook to be addictive to children, internally documented the resulting mental health harms and misled parents about the risks, according to the release. It follows a bipartisan investigation that nearly every state attorney general joined beginning in 2021, according to an Aug. 26 news release from the District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb’s office
The settlement requires Meta to overhaul how young users experience its platforms, including new time limits, nighttime and school-hours restrictions, and limits on features linked to poor mental health outcomes in kids and teens.
Here are seven things to know:
1. Meta will pay at least $12.1 billion. The payment runs over a 10-year period, and the total could climb by another $5 billion — to $17.1 billion — if other major social media companies adopt comparable child-safety features for their platforms.
2. D.C. will receive at least $90.4 million and up to $129.4 million under the deal. The OAG called it the largest state consumer protection settlement in history outside the Big Tobacco settlements of the 1990s. Virginia’s attorney general also announced the state is guaranteed to receive $353 million.
3. Teens will face a two-hour daily time limit on Instagram and Facebook. Mandatory pauses kick in after 15 minutes of continuous use and again at the 60- and 90-minute marks, and the limits stay in place for five years; if Snap, TikTok and YouTube adopt comparable terms, the per-platform limit drops to 60 minutes for 10 years. Access will also be blocked from midnight to 6 a.m., with notifications silenced from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.
4. School-hours notifications will be turned off. Meta will eliminate push notifications on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. during the school year, limiting children’s access to the platforms during class time.
5. Meta must strengthen its safety and parental controls. That includes stronger age verification, safeguards against bullying and content promoting eating disorders, suicide and self-harm, limits on beauty filters and visible “like” counts, and regular independent audits of the features’ effectiveness.
6. The settlement caps a yearslong investigation and legal fight. Nearly every state attorney general began investigating the industry in 2021; 42 of them, including D.C.’s, sued Meta in October 2023. Since then, D.C. has litigated its own case in D.C. Superior Court, other states have pursued separate cases in their own state courts, and more than 30 states have pursued a consolidated case in federal court in California.
7. D.C.’s case uncovered internal Meta efforts to limit its legal exposure. According to the release, Meta’s lawyers directed the removal of portions of internal documents showing the company’s awareness of teens’ developmental vulnerability. A federal court dismissed claims tied to most of the challenged features, but the D.C. Superior Court allowed the D.C. Office of the Attorney General to continue pursuing all of them.
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