Meta has agreed to pay $17 billion (£12.5 billion) and implement child-safety measures on its key social media platforms to bring an end to a landmark trial over teenage addiction. The company, which owns Instagram and Facebook, settled claims filed by 47 US state attorneys general today.
Settlement ends trial before Zuckerberg testimony
California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey were among the 29 states that originally sued Meta in 2023. The deal brings a swift end to the trial which was expected to result in CEO Mark Zuckerberg taking to the stand before a jury in a California federal court.
Meta's settlement is worth $353 million (£258.9 million) in Virginia alone and is one of the biggest in state consumer protection history, Attorney General Jay Jones said. "For years, Meta intentionally deceived the public about the addictive and harmful design features that have wreaked havoc on youth mental health," Jones said.
Meta defends record and urges rivals to join
He added the settlement "will put an end to these dangerous practices and deliver meaningful relief that will protect children from online harm." Meta directed The Mirror to its comment following the trial, adding: "Today, we are announcing an agreement with a bipartisan group of 52 attorneys general across US states, territories, and the District of Columbia, building on our longstanding efforts to empower parents and support teens."
"Over the years, we have consistently partnered with parents and experts — listening, learning, and building. That’s why we launched Teen Accounts in 2024, to bring automatic protections to teens, and more control for parents. Ensuring teens have a safe and productive experience on our platforms is an absolute imperative for Meta. We want to get this right for parents and teens, and that’s why we partnered with state attorneys general to set a new industry standard."
Meta went on to "urge TikTok and YouTube to join us and state attorneys general in adopting this new standard, to ensure teens use social media in a healthy and responsible way." While the $17 billion settlement is one of the largest in consumer protection history, it represents a fraction of Meta's revenue with the company amassing $201 billion (£147.4 billion) in revenue last year.
Safety measures and background
The lawsuit brought by the states accused Meta of having contributed to the youth mental health crisis by deliberately designing features that cause addiction in children and hiding them from the public. It argued Meta violated federal laws by routinely collecting data from children under 13 without their parents' consent. The trial began in Oakland, California, with US 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.
Meta has now agreed to adopt numerous safety features, including a "hard cap" on daily time limits and pauses for children using Instagram and Facebook. It will eliminate push notifications during 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. It will also implement stronger and more user-friendly parental controls and limits on social comparison features such as "like" counts.
Criticism from former employees
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 privacy 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 Bejar, a former Meta engineering director, said during his testimony last week that Meta consistently prioritised 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. He said: "If you step away from the product, they are not going to make any money."
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 (£1.03 trillion) - a figure legal experts said was unlikely, if not impossible.
