Meta has agreed to a landmark $18bn settlement in a major US federal case accusing it of endangering children, the terms of which will force the social media giant to introduce new safety features to platforms including Instagram and Facebook. The social media giant has faced an avalanche of legal cases against it this year, mostly arguing that it deliberately designed its platforms to be addictive and that they have harmed children. It has already lost two of these and been forced to pay damages.
Under the agreement, child users under the age of 18 will see a slew of changes to their Facebook and Instagram accounts, ranging from night curfews to two-hour usage limits, which Meta must implement as part of the settlement reached on Wednesday with 48 US states. The agreement could have a global ripple effect as several countries around the world are already taking regulatory action against Meta and other social media companies over their platforms. So, what is in the settlement Meta has reached in the United States, and how will Instagram and Facebook change for users?
Twenty-nine US states sued Meta, accusing it of designing its platforms in ways that “encourage addictive behaviour, fail to verify users’ ages, encourage adolescents to bypass parental controls, and inadequately safeguard against harmful content and/or intentionally amplify harmful and exploitative content”, according to filings at the Court of Appeal in California. The first four of the states that originally filed their federal lawsuit against Meta in 2023 – California, Kentucky, Colorado and New Jersey – began their cases in a California federal trial last week. The attorneys general bringing the case also asked the court to order that changes be made to Meta’s platforms to protect young social media users.
In particular, they demanded that Meta introduce a process of parental verification for teenage users; change its “dopamine-manipulating” algorithms; remove image filters for users’ personal images; forbid the creation of multiple accounts; and end “disappearing” messages and posts. The lawsuit also alleged Meta had violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by collecting, retaining and using personal data from children under 13 without proper parental consent. In February this year, Meta lost a multimillion-dollar case brought on similar grounds by a young woman referred to as KGM in Los Angeles, over platform features linked to addiction in younger users.
In March, a US jury ordered Meta to pay $375m for endangering children in a case brought by the state of New Mexico. Last month, a judge in New Mexico also ordered Facebook and Instagram owner Meta to pay a further $567m in a second phase of the trial. Meta denied wrongdoing but agreed to settle after evidence was heard that Meta knew its products harmed children’s mental health.
The total payout – to be paid over 10 years – is a fraction of Meta’s 2025 revenue of $201bn. The company, which was originally founded as Facebook in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, agreed to make maximum payments totalling $16.7bn to 47 US states as well as Washington, DC; Puerto Rico; American Samoa; and the Northern Mariana Islands. Among those, California could receive a $2.2bn payout, while New York could receive $1.1bn.
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