Meta Agrees to Up to $18 Billion Settlement Over Facebook and Instagram Child Safety Claims

Meta has agreed to settlements with U.S. states and territories to resolve allegations that Facebook and Instagram harmed children and failed to adequately protect young users.

If approved by a California judge, Meta could pay up to $18 billion (£13.3 billion) to 48 states, the District of Columbia and three U.S. territories. The agreement would represent the company’s largest payout to date in a child safety case.

As part of the settlement, Meta will introduce new safety measures designed to protect children and teenagers on Facebook and Instagram. These include default daily screen-time limits, overnight notification blocks and additional parental controls.

“Now is a critical time to clean up an industry that is harming our children,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said.

Meta denied wrongdoing in the settlement. The company said on Wednesday that the payments would be made through annual instalments over 10 years.

The agreement covers most of the United States. The initial lawsuit was filed in 2023 by 29 states, which accused Meta of violating federal and state child privacy laws and designing features that encouraged children to use its platforms.

New Mexico was among the states that did not join the settlement. The state has pursued a separate case against Meta, alleging that the company failed to protect children from risks on its platforms.

During a five-day federal trial in Oakland, California, state attorneys argued that Meta knew millions of 11- and 12-year-olds had been using Facebook and Instagram for years but did too little to prevent underage access or reduce potential harm.

Lawyers relied on millions of internal Meta documents, including employee emails, internal investigations and chat logs involving senior executives, including chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.

One internal Instagram study described teenagers as having “an addict’s story” about their use of the platform. State attorneys cited the material as evidence that Meta understood the risks facing young users.

“The trial didn’t go well for Meta,” Bonta said on Wednesday.

Meta said it had spent years investing in research, testing and new features intended to make Facebook and Instagram safer for children and teenagers.

“We are always committed to teen safety,” Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said during court testimony.

The case was resolved and the court adjourned before Mosseri could return to testify before the jury.

Former Meta researcher George Volichenko also testified about internal communications related to the company’s child safety efforts.

Volichenko said that while working at Meta in 2022, he questioned why his teams were not given more freedom to test and introduce safety features. One proposed tool was a “quiet mode” that muted notifications for teenagers at night. His team believed the feature would be more effective if it were enabled automatically.

He recalled a manager telling him, “You don’t need to worry too much about low hiring numbers. The team is there to protect the company from future lawsuits.”

Under Wednesday’s settlement, a feature called “Night Mode” will block notifications from midnight to 6 a.m. by default for teenage users. Parents or guardians will be able to disable the setting.

“The framework we have negotiated will make it easier for parents to control how their children access our platforms,” said CJ Mahoney, Meta’s chief legal officer.

Other child safety features included in the settlement include:

The daily screen-time limit could be reduced to one hour if other social media platforms, including TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube, agree to introduce similar restrictions for younger users.

Bonta urged other technology companies to adopt comparable child safety measures, describing the Meta settlement as a potential blueprint for the wider social media industry.

He also called on TikTok and YouTube to implement the same protections for younger users.

“Our new time-limited commitments, Night Mode capabilities and usage restrictions during school hours point us in the right direction for the industry as a whole,” Mahoney said. “But this framework will only work if all of our colleagues join us.”

YouTube and TikTok have been contacted for comment.

District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb called the agreement “a monumental public health victory.”

“The safety features that Meta is required to install will fundamentally and immediately change the way young people use Instagram and Facebook,” he said.