Meta agreed to an $18 billion settlement with 48 US states, the District of Columbia, and three territories to resolve claims that Facebook and Instagram harmed children, marking the company’s largest payment to date over child safety litigation. California Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers approved the settlement, which will be paid in annual installments over ten years. Meta denied wrongdoing but agreed to implement new protections for teen users, including default night-time notification blocks, a two-hour daily time limit, hidden like counts, and prompts alerting teens to extended usage.
The settlement followed a lawsuit originally filed in 2023 by 29 states, with a jury trial that began last week in Oakland, California, drawing on internal Meta documents including research and employee communications. California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the trial had gone poorly for Meta and urged other platforms including TikTok and YouTube to adopt similar safety measures. Meta’s chief legal officer CJ Mahoney said the new framework would empower parents to manage children’s platform access, while adding that broader industry adoption would be needed for the approach to be fully effective. New Mexico, which pursued a separate case resulting in a public nuisance ruling against Meta last month, was not part of the settlement.
