Half reached a agreement to settle a large lawsuit brought by 29 US stateswhich they accused the group of having designed Facebook and Instagram in order to encourage behaviors compulsive use among minorsas well as having collected personal data from children without parental consent. The agreement, reached during the second week of the trial in federal court in Oakland, California, puts end the proceedings without reaching the jury’s verdict.
The amount of the agreement presents a difference between the documents filed with the court and the communication released directly by Meta. Court documents indicate a maximum payment of $16.68 billion, as the company talks about approximately 18 billion dollarsto be paid in annual installments over ten years. Meta does not admit any responsibility or violation with the definition of the case.
According to what was communicated by the company, approximately 70% of the sum, equal to 12.7 billion dollars, will be allocated to the participating States. The remaining 30%, approximately 5.3 billion, is subject to the adoption of specific measures by YouTube and TikTok for the protection of adolescents. Meta specifically asks the two platforms to introduce a one-hour daily limit, a night mode and age verification systems, as well as paying an equivalent amount.
The agreement arises from a process launched in 2023 and led by California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey, with the overall participation of 29 states. Authorities alleged that Meta had knowingly developed Facebook and Instagram to make it difficult for minors to stop using them and that it had provided misleading information about the safety of its services.
An additional challenge concerned the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). According to the States, Meta collected personal information belonging to users it knew were children without informing parents or obtaining their consent. The allegations also included the use of such data in training machine learning and generative artificial intelligence models.
The trial was expected to last about six weeks. CEO Mark Zuckerberg was also expected among the witnesses, but he did not arrive to testify. In the days preceding the agreement, Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, had testified, focusing among other things on the use of the “Take a break” function. Mosseri had said that before it was set as the default feature, the percentage of teens using it was in the low single digits and that most kids didn’t want it.
Meta has always rejected the accusation of having deliberately tried to create addiction in minors. During the trial, the company argued that its research did not show a clear link between the use of social networks by adolescents and worsening of their well-being. It also disputed charges of misleading users, arguing that so-called “social media addiction” does not constitute a recognized psychiatric condition.
The agreement introduces a series of changes which, once judicial approval is obtained, should remain in force for ten years. This is provided for users under 18 of Facebook and Instagram in the affected states and territories a predefined limit of two hours per day, calculated overall on the two platforms. Teenagers will receive alerts after 60 and 90 minutes and additional notifications at 15 minute intervals with the aim of encouraging more conscious use.
The “Night Mode” mode will instead block access to applications between midnight and 6 amWhile “School Mode” will silence notifications between 8am and 3pm. Direct messages will remain excluded both from the two-hour count and from the notification block, so as to allow teenagers to maintain contact with friends and family.
The agreement also provides for the default block from displaying the number of likes and reactions on your own content and that of other users. Meta will also limit teens’ access to so-called “extreme makeup filters,” extending a previous restriction applied to filters associated with cosmetic surgery.
On the age verification front, Meta will increase investments to proactively target accounts which could belong to users under 13 or to teenagers who have registered as adults. The company also intends to Strengthen systems that prevent adults from finding, tracking, and interacting with teensas well as strengthening parental control tools and reducing response times to reports of harmful content made by minors.
Meta describes the agreement as part of a broader intervention that should involve the entire sector. “As teens freely switch between apps, we need an industry-wide solution,” said CJ Mahoney, Chief Legal Officer at Meta. “We therefore call on our industry peers, TikTok and YouTube, to adopt this new framework immediately.”
However, the settlement of the case does not close the broader dispute on the impact of social networks on minors. Meta, Snap, Alphabet and ByteDance continue to face thousands of federal and state lawsuits across the United States.
Furthermore, Meta has already suffered some unfavorable decisions. In the New Mexico case, a jury awarded $375 million in damages in March, and on August 6, a judge ruled that the company had created public harm, awarding an additional $567 million.
The matter also has an international dimension. In July the European Commission intensified its investigation into Meta in relation to alleged design mechanisms aimed at encouraging compulsive use by minors. Australia and the United Kingdom have taken action on access to platforms for under-16s, while New Zealand has announced plans to introduce a bill to introduce a ban. The measures provided for in the US agreement do not apply to Europe.
The agreement will become operational following final court approval. Only at that point will the waivers of the right of appeal provided for in the agreement also come into force. Furthermore, the ways in which the States will distribute and use the sums received remain to be defined.
