Meta settles landmark child safety suit for more than $17 billion

Meta’s ready to pay up.

On Wednesday, the social media giant agreed to pay more than $17 billion and implement additional child safety measures as part of a settlement with 47 states, ending a landmark federal trial.

The settlement, which was announced two weeks into testimony, is the culmination of a yearslong legal battle in which the participating states, US territories, and District of Columbia alleged that Meta intentionally designed its platforms to be addictive to children and downplayed the mental health effects they created for young users, as first reported by outlets including the Wall Street Journal. The lawsuit also alleged that Meta illegally collected data on children under 13 without parental consent.

While $17 billion could be considered a drop in the bucket for a company that made more than $200 billion last year, it has drawn comparisons to the Big Tobacco cases of the ’90s and could be a sign of more legal action to come.

What happens next? In addition to paying out billions of dollars over the next 10 years that will, in part, help fund a variety of children’s services around the country, Meta announced that, pending judicial approval, it will make a series of changes to Instagram and Facebook users under 18, including:

• Restricting platform usage to two hours per day
• Blocking the apps’ usage between midnight and 6am
• Muting notifications between 8am and 3pm, during typical school hours
• Delivering regular prompts after 15, 60, and 90 minutes of continuous app usage
• Providing an option to select a non-algorithmic feed as the default
• Investing in “even stronger technology” to crack down on accounts created by users under 13

A falling tide sinks all ships? In Meta’s statement acknowledging the settlement, the company called on TikTok and YouTube to adopt similar safety measures for teen accounts, including a one-hour daily time limit. Meta also said it will only pay the final 30% of the settlement if the two rival platforms implement the proposed measures and agree to match a payment totaling approximately $5.3 billion.

“While this is an important step, the fact is that teens move fluidly between dozens of apps a day,” the statement reads. “All platforms should empower parents and support teens by putting the same measures in place, because we know that when teens are restricted on one app, they simply move to another.”