Meta has agreed to pay $17 billion and add child-safety measures to its Facebook and Instagram platforms to end a landmark trial over teen social media addiction and settle claims filed by 47 states, state attorneys general announced Wednesday.
Ohio and, Kentucky were among 29 states that sued the tech giant in 2023, but the deal cuts short the trial, which was expected to see CEO Mark Zuckerberg take the stand before a jury in federal court in California.
The agreement is worth $358 million in Kentucky alone, according to Attorney General Russell Coleman.
"While Meta is certainly paying for its conduct, this was never just about the money," Coleman said in a press release. "Kids deserve a childhood that isn't measured in likes and followers. The online protections delivered by this settlement will bring a generational change that will make social media platforms safer for Kentucky families."
Ohio expects to receive more than $319 million from the settlement over the next decade, Attorney General Andy Wilson announced Wednesday.
"With this historic settlement, Meta agrees to establish meaningful protections for young users," Wilson said in a press release. "Digital platforms that cater to children have a duty to shield impressionable minds from the risks of unchecked exposure to social media.
Meta said it was pleased with the settlement, but also called out its competitors.
"Because teens move fluidly across dozens of apps, we need an industry-wide solution," said Meta Chief Legal Officer CJ Mahoney. "We therefore call on our industry peers, TikTok and YouTube, to implement this new framework, right away."
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The lawsuit accused Meta of contributing to the youth mental health crisis by deliberately designing features that addict children to its platforms and hiding them from the public. It also argued that Meta violated federal laws by routinely collecting data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent.
The trial kicked off last week in Oakland, California, with U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers overseeing the proceedings. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, began his testimony late Tuesday and defended Meta’s record and progress on child safety and privacy.
The cases in other states had been expected to go to trial later. In addition, nine attorneys general filed lawsuits in their respective states.
Under the proposed settlement, Meta agreed to adopt a series of safety features, including a “hard cap” on daily time limits and pauses for children using Instagram and Facebook.
It will eliminate push notifications during weekday school hours and bring in “robust” age assurance measures and “age-appropriate” content controls to prevent bullying and harmful material about eating disorders and self-harm.
There will be stronger and more user-friendly parental controls and limits on social comparison features such as “like” counts.
The federal lawsuit was the result of an investigation led by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Vermont. It followed newspaper reports, first by The Wall Street Journal in 2021, that found that the company knew about the harm Instagram can cause teenagers — especially teen girls — when it comes to mental health and body image issues.
Meta has since added a host of safety features to Instagram, including separate accounts for teenagers with stronger protections around messaging and privacy, along with content restrictions.
But child safety experts, along with some former Meta employees, have long contended that the features are little more than window dressing.
Arturo Béjar, a former Meta engineering director, said during his testimony last week that Meta consistently prioritized profits over safety in designing its products, focusing on how often and for how long people used them, even if it was detrimental to their mental well-being.
“If you step away from the product, they are not going to make any money,” he said.
While the four states in the Oakland trial did not officially say how much they had been seeking, Meta said in a court filing that financial penalties in the case could amount to as much as $1.4 trillion — a figure legal experts said was unlikely, if not impossible.
