Meta agrees to landmark settlement over social media addiction cases

(CN) — Meta agreed to a landmark settlement Wednesday with 47 states, Washington, D.C. and several U.S. territories, in which it would pay up to $17.1 billion in civil penalties and implement safety features to address claims its social media was made intentionally addictive to children.

The settlement resolves a major federal trial in Northern California, where four states urged U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to find the social media company violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and other consumer protection laws by hooking young users and harvesting their personal data.

The trial had only just begun in front of the Barack Obama appointee, with opening statements by California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey on Aug. 18. A second trial, with claims brought by 25 states in 2023, was also set to begin later this year.

Under the settlement, Meta will pay at least $12.1 billion over a 10-year period to resolve each of the states' lawsuits. The $17.1 billion total is contingent on whether other social media sites like Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube agree to similar settlement terms.

Meta has agreed to begin implementing hard-capped daily time limits and "productive pauses" for children on Instagram and Facebook, where young users will have a two-hour daily time limit with mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use and again at 60 and 90 minutes to end "doomscrolling." Those time limits remain in effect for five years, and if Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube follow suit, the daily limit will drop to 60 minutes for 10 years.

Further, the company agreed to restrict children's access to feeds between midnight and 6 a.m. while also silencing notifications from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. Additionally, the company must end push notifications on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. during the school year. Unlike current time-limit features, teens will not be able to turn them off themselves.

Other remedies include robust age verification measures; age-appropriate content controls with stronger safeguards against bullying, content promoting eating disorders and suicide or self-harm related content; stronger parental controls; and limits on beauty filters and visible like counts tied to poor mental health outcomes.

The company also agreed to regular assessments by an independent auditor with oversight by the settling states.

"This is a significant victory for parents across the country," California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a Wednesday morning press conference, adding a judge needs to approve the agreement. "This is a major breakthrough."

"The trial was not going well for Meta," he added. "I think ours went particularly well for us and particularly bad for them. Adam Mosseri giving testimony while we settled was not random," Bonta said of the head of Instagram.

Bonta noted that how California spends the majority of its slice of the settlement will ultimately be up to the Legislature and governor.

In a statement, Meta's Chief Legal Officer C.J. Mahoney announced the settlement as an effort to empower parents to easily manage how their kids access their platforms and called on TikTok and YouTube to follow suit.

"Because teens move fluidly across dozens of apps, we need an industry-wide solution," Mahoney said. "As a parent, I'm proud of both the work Meta has done to protect kids historically, and of this new groundbreaking agreement. But its success depends on all other social media platforms following Meta's lead."

D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb lauded the settlement in a statement, calling it a "monumental public health victory for young people" across the country and celebrating the safety features Meta would have to implement on its social media sites.

"Meta intentionally exploited kids for profit and then lied about it, claiming its product were safe when its own internal research confirmed the platforms were addictive and harmful," Schwalb said in a statement. "The physical, mental and emotional harms that intentionally addictive social media inflict on youth — and particularly teenage girls — are widespread across the tech industry, and this successful, coordinated multistage litigation has resulted in Meta being the first platform to come to the table and agree to such comprehensive reforms. It will not be the last."