California Attorney General Rob Bonta and a coalition of 51 state attorneys general announced a proposed settlement with Meta Platforms requiring the company to make fundamental changes to Instagram and Facebook to protect children from mental health harms. The settlement, subject to court approval, comes as trial began on August 18 in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
The settlement provides for up to $17 billion in payments to states over ten years, with California receiving $1.5 billion to $2.1 billion if approved by the court. California will designate funds for preventing or remedying mental health harms to young people associated with social media use.
Meta agreed to set a default daily time limit of two hours for users under 18, with the limit decreasing to one hour if other social media platforms adopt similar terms. The company must implement a default nighttime block from midnight to 6 a.m., expandable to 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. if competing platforms agree to similar hours. Notifications to users under 18 are disabled by default from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. and during school hours from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Meta also agreed to ban the display of likes and reactions to users under 18, ban cosmetic procedure filters, and offer non-personalized feeds that do not use algorithms to target endless scrolling. The company must enhance mechanisms for teens to report harmful content and respond to 90 percent of such reports within six hours.
Meta will establish enhanced parental supervision tools and implement robust age-verification measures to detect users under 18 and identify children under 13 for removal. An independent auditor will oversee compliance with expansive access to Meta's information and regular reporting to state attorneys general. Meta is prohibited from making false, misleading, or deceptive statements about its safety features.
The lawsuit, filed in 2023, alleged Meta illegally collected data from children under 13, designed platforms to drive compulsive use, and misled users and families about safety risks.