Meta Reaches $18 Billion Settlement with States over Youth Social Media Harms

Meta has agreed to pay approximately $18 billion and make certain platform design changes to resolve claims brought by a coalition of more than 50 state attorneys general alleging that Facebook and Instagram were designed to cause compulsive use in young people. The pending settlement with the attorneys general does not directly affect the thousands of similar lawsuits brought by individuals and school districts, which remain ongoing.

“Today’s settlement is the product of years of pressure from advocates, families, and Attorneys General who forced Meta to answer for how it designed its products, but more will be needed to address the abusive underlying data practices that drive harms to users,” said EPIC Counsel Tom McBrien.

The settlement, which still requires court approval, resolves the federal trial that had been underway in Oakland, California, and follows a nearly $1 billion judgment against Meta in a related New Mexico case earlier this month. The states’ claims relied heavily on Meta’s own internal research and communications, obtained through discovery, showing that the company understood the risks its design choices posed to minors. Notably, roughly 30% of the settlement amount is not guaranteed, and it will only be released if TikTok and YouTube adopt matching restrictions and make matching payments of their own.

Under the settlement, Meta will:

• implement a default two-hour daily time limit for users under 18 that only a parent can increase,
• block app access overnight by default,
• mute notifications by default during school hours,
• hide like and reaction counts by default,
• prohibit filters that mimic cosmetic surgery or extreme makeup alteration, and
• provide teens the option to switch to a non-personalized, chronological feed and to disable autoplay, with parents able to require either as the default rather than leaving it as a teen-initiated choice.

The agreement also includes independent auditing of Meta’s compliance for five years.

The new commitments are an improvement. But most of these requirements track obligations that a growing number of states already impose through their own legislation, and many of them overlap with what Meta already claims to offer through its existing Teen Accounts and parental controls, features that have been shown to fall short of addressing core harms. There is value in setting an enforceable floor under those features. But much of what this settlement requires is not a new obligation so much as a mandate that Meta actually deliver on commitments it has already made, ones that do not reach the root cause of the harm. As a result, the underlying system that produces these harms remains substantially intact.

This settlement allows Meta to continue collecting and using behavioral data to figure out how to keep users glued to the app, and this settlement does not restrict that addictive design. Its most significant lever for reducing compulsive use, the non-algorithmic feed, remains an opt-in setting for teens rather than a default, and none of its provisions touch the data practices that make engagement-optimized design possible in the first place.

This settlement is an important step forward, but there is more work to be done to halt these harmful systems. EPIC’s Model Age-Appropriate Design Code takes a different approach to this same problem: rather than treating a chronological feed as the only alternative to a manipulative one, it would limit the personal data a platform can use to shape any user’s feed to data reflecting the user’s own express preferences, as the default for all users, not just minors, allowing more data-intensive, engagement-driven design only for adults who affirmatively opt in.

While the settlement amount is relatively small compared to Meta’s revenue and the commitments do not strike at the heart of Meta’s (and other tech giants’) harmful behaviors, the settlement is still a significant blow to Big Tech impunity.