The $18 Billion Question: Will Meta’s Settlement Actually Protect Kids?
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Earlier this year, juries in two different states delivered verdicts against tech giants Meta and Google. For the first time ever, social media was officially declared harmful to children.
In Los Angeles, a jury found Meta (Facebook and Instagram) was negligent for failing to properly warn users about the dangers of its apps, and Google for the design of YouTube, which contributed to the plaintiff’s mental health issues (TikTok and Snap settled before trial).
In New Mexico, the state attorney general brought a case against Meta for violating the state’s consumer protection law for failing to protect young users from child predators.
Despite these historic victories, the relatively insignificant monetary awards in addition to protracted appeal processes left questions as to whether or not the verdicts would encourage preemptive changes by these companies. Nonetheless, the decisions validated what parents, teachers, and doctors have been saying for years. Social media is addictive and harmful, especially to children. These cases focused on the platforms’ designs, not content.
On August 18, Meta was back in the hot seat. This time, 29 state attorneys general accused Meta, in federal court in Oakland, California, of deceptively marketing its products as safe while designing them for addictive use. Once again, the attorneys general were accusing Meta of misrepresenting the safety related to app design features. This approach avoided Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects companies like social media companies from being held liable for information provided by a third party.
This time, the potential financial consequences weren’t couch change. Meta faced as much as $1.4 trillion in damages. Some called the case tech’s “Big Tobacco” moment. An adverse decision could threaten social media as we all know it. Features like infinite scrolling, autoplaying videos, Instagram Stories, and algorithms were challenged with allegations they led to compulsive use.
Today, before CEO Mark Zuckerberg was scheduled to testify, Meta settled for a total financial package of potentially up to $18 billion paid over 10 years. (This includes a $17 billion agreement with 47 states, plus a separate $1 billion settlement with Texas).
Meta also agreed to incorporate additional protections for young users, including blocking access at certain nighttime hours, muting notifications during school hours, and adding more parental controls. As much as $5 billion of the total settlement amount is contingent on other companies like YouTube and TikTok making similar changes.
Meta said it would take about six months to roll out these updates. While this settlement may not be the harshest financial penalty or mark the end of doomscrolling, it’s a meaningful foundation for children’s safety and the mental health consequences of social media overuse. If these actionable changes weren’t the goal, the state attorneys general wouldn’t have agreed to the settlement. Expect more to follow as we learn more about the settlement, when these new safety features are implemented, and what they actually mean for kids’ screen time.
