SACRAMENTO, California — Meta has reached a tentative $17 billion settlement with nearly all U.S. states that would also see the social media giant make sweeping changes to dramatically restrict minors’ access to Instagram and Facebook, the California Department of Justice announced Wednesday.
The pending agreement is a monumental concession without precedent by one of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful tech companies. It would end a pivotal trial over claims brought by California and more than two dozen other states that Meta intentionally hooked kids on its platforms, while misleading users about their potential harms. The deal would also resolve claims brought by other states and some U.S. territories in different proceedings.
“We have secured a settlement with Meta that will make social media less dangerous for our kids and make a world of difference for children and their families,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. He said the terms of the deal call for “massive transformations that will reduce the risk of harm.”
The impact of the concessions Meta has agreed to make will be limited to the U.S. but nonetheless far-reaching, as the company is set to implement protections that online safety advocates have been trying to extract from Congress for years. Instagram and Facebook boast hundreds of millions of American users, many of whom are the teens and parents who would experience the new child safety features most directly.
According to Bonta’s office, the settlement, which must be approved by a federal judge, demands that Meta build guardrails into its platforms to limit minors’ access to two hours each day and block them entirely between midnight and 6 a.m. unless a parent decides to override the restrictions.
Default settings will also block Meta from sending minors notifications between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., with similar prohibitions applying during school hours from mid-August to mid-June.
Restrictions could get even tighter. If social media competitors like Snapchat, TikTok or YouTube agree to follow suit, daily time limits would drop to one hour, and the nighttime access block would last from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., according to the terms of the proposed settlement.
The settlement will further limit how minors engage with Meta products by requiring the company to conceal the number of “likes” and other reactions to their posts and those they view, banning so-called “beauty filters” and allowing them to deactivate personalized feeds that use algorithms to fine-tune content recommendations and maximize user engagement. Meta would also have to report to an independent auditor and institute more stringent age assurance measures to identify young users, among other safety commitments.
Meta will pay the $17 billion to states over ten years, according to Bonta’s office.
For Meta, the settlement will abruptly end the trial prosecutors from California and a coalition of other states had waged in an Oakland courtroom. By resolving the case, the company avoids the possibility of an even more damaging result had the jury found it liable for mental health harms that young users claimed they suffered from excessive use of Meta products. It allows CEO Mark Zuckerberg to avoid testifying and cuts short attorneys’ questioning of Instagram head Adam Mosseri, which began Tuesday.
Bloomberg first reported settlement talks between Meta and state prosecutors Tuesday evening.
The settlement could also sway the outcome of hundreds of other pending lawsuits alleging Meta, Snap, TikTok and Google, YouTube’s parent company, designed similarly addictive platforms that caused anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and in some cases, death by suicide or drug overdose.
California is expected to receive between $1.5 billion and $2.1 billion from the settlement, according to Bonta’s office. The governor and state lawmakers would decide how to spend the money.
Texas, Florida and New Mexico appear to be the only three U.S. states not listed as part of the settlement terms as described by Bonta’s office.
It would not be the first time Meta has paid up as part of child harm cases, though payouts in past cases have been significantly smaller. In March, a Los Angeles jury ruled that Meta and Google owed $6 million in penalties after finding the companies liable in another teen addiction case.
And just this month, a federal court in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay the state nearly $1 billion in penalties after its attorney general successfully argued its platforms endangered kids. The court also directed the company to implement similar design changes, such as silencing nighttime notifications and enforcing strict screen-time limits for young users.