Meta to pay up to $18 billion to settle lawsuit over harms to young users
Meta has agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by dozens of US states alleging it built Facebook and Instagram to be addictive to teens and improperly collected children's data. The company will pay up to $18 billion and roll out new safeguards for young users.
Meta has reached a settlement to resolve a closely watched lawsuit over children's privacy and social media addiction. Under the deal, which still requires court approval, the company will pay up to $18 billion and make a series of changes to its platforms. Meta has not admitted any wrongdoing.
Dozens of state attorneys general, led by California's Rob Bonta, sued Meta in 2023 following a two-year investigation. They alleged the company knowingly built features designed to make young users compulsively engage with its platforms while publicly claiming those features were safe. The states also accused Meta of violating children's online privacy law by collecting personal data from minors without parental consent and using it to train AI and machine learning systems. The case went to trial this month but was settled before Instagram head Adam Mosseri was due back on the witness stand.
New restrictions
Meta will set a default two-hour daily time limit for users under 18, adjustable only by parents, and will block its apps between midnight and 6AM by default. Teens will get periodic reminders about their screen time. If TikTok and YouTube adopt similar measures, Meta says it will cut its limit to one hour and extend the nighttime block to between 10PM and 7AM.
Of the $18 billion, Meta will pay 70 percent over 10 years to fund states' youth online safety programs, regardless of what competitors do. The remaining roughly $5.3 billion will only be paid if TikTok and YouTube jointly commit an equal amount and adopt comparable restrictions, including a one-hour time limit, nighttime blocks and age verification.
Meta also agreed to block notifications to minors overnight and during school hours, aside from direct messages and safety alerts, hide like counts on posts, and ban extreme makeup filters. Teens will be able to switch to a non-algorithmic, chronological feed, which parents can also enable by default, and to disable autoplay. Meta pledged to improve how teens can report harmful content and respond to most reports within six hours, along with strengthening age verification and removing users under 13 from its platforms, overseen by an independent auditor.
