Meta has agreed to pay up to $17.1 billion and make sweeping changes to Facebook and Instagram under a proposed multistate settlement resolving claims that its platforms harmed children and teenagers and misled the public about those risks.
The agreement, announced today by a bipartisan coalition of 51 attorneys general, remains subject to court approval. It stems from a nationwide investigation launched in 2021 and lawsuits filed in 2023. California's case alleged that Meta designed features that encouraged compulsive use among young people, misrepresented platform safety, and illegally collected and used data belonging to children under 13 in violation of laws including the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, operates some of the world's largest social platforms. The settlement is particularly significant from a privacy perspective because it requires stronger age-assurance systems that can identify users under 18 and detect and remove accounts belonging to children under 13.
Meta says it will also strengthen technology for identifying teenagers who provide an adult birth date. Neither Meta nor the attorneys general detailed what information those systems will analyze, making age assurance an important privacy consideration as platforms increasingly try to determine users' ages.
For users identified as minors, Facebook and Instagram will impose a combined two-hour daily limit that can only be turned off with parental permission and block most app functionality between midnight and 6 a.m. Push notifications will also be restricted during school hours, while direct messaging remains exempt.
Other requirements include stronger parental controls, hidden like and reaction counts, restrictions on cosmetic-surgery and extreme-makeup filters, and an option to make a non-personalized feed the default. California Attorney General says that Meta must also respond within six hours to 90% of reports from teens concerning potentially harmful content.
An independent auditor will assess Meta's compliance and report to participating states. Meta will also be barred from making false or misleading statements about its safety features.
The agreement additionally creates an independent social media research foundation. Meta says it will provide the foundation with data from users who consent to sharing it for research into teen well-being.
Most settlement requirements will remain binding for 10 years, although the daily time limit and nighttime block initially carry five-year commitments. Those restrictions could become stricter if competing platforms adopt comparable protections.
New Jersey Attorney General says that Meta will pay at least $12.1 billion and up to $17.1 billion under the youth-related settlement. Separately, participating states announced a settlement of more than $460 million resolving claims over Meta's sharing of nonpublic Facebook user information with third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, ahead of the 2016 US election.
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