One of the world’s largest social media conglomerates, Meta, has finalized a landmark legal settlement with a bipartisan coalition of 52 U.S. states, territories and the District of Columbia to resolve a high-profile lawsuit centered on failures to protect children and teens on its flagship platforms Facebook and Instagram.
According to official court filings, the company is on the hook to pay up to $16.68 billion (£12.26 billion), a sum Meta itself clarified will be disbursed in annual installments spread across a 10-year period. The funds will be allocated to state priorities including youth online safety programs, marking one of the largest financial resolutions ever reached in a tech industry youth protection case.
Beyond the financial penalty, the settlement imposes sweeping new mandatory safety measures designed to limit underage users’ exposure to harm on Meta’s platforms. Key requirements include daily screen time limits for teenage accounts, automatic night-time usage blocks, restricted access to platforms during standard school hours, enhanced parental oversight tools, and more rigorous age verification processes to stop children from creating accounts under false ages.
The legal action, brought by state attorneys general, accused Meta of violating multiple federal and state privacy regulations designed to protect minors. Plaintiffs alleged the company deliberately built platform algorithms to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare young users, while deliberately turning a blind eye to well-documented harms to the mental and physical health of America’s youth. Meta has consistently denied any wrongdoing, and said it agreed to the settlement to avoid prolonged legal conflict.
Following the announcement of the agreement, District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb framed the resolution as a transformative win for public health. “The safety features Meta is required to install will fundamentally and immediately change how young people use Instagram and Facebook,” Schwalb said.
In its own official statement, Meta framed the settlement as an extension of its existing work to support teen wellbeing and give parents more control over their children’s online activity. The company also called on its major industry competitors, TikTok and YouTube, to adopt identical safety frameworks for their own underage user bases.
“Our new Time Limit commitments, Night Mode features and usage limits during school hours set the right path forward for our whole industry, but this framework will only work if all our peers join us,” said Meta Chief Legal Officer CJ Mahoney. As of the settlement announcement, representatives for both TikTok and YouTube have been contacted for comment but have not yet released a public response.