Meta agrees to pay up to $18 billion and limit teen app time to settle child-safety suits

Four of the states — California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey — were expected to seek close to $200 billion in civil penalties.

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The settlement does not require Meta to abandon personalized recommendations or targeted advertising.

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The total payout represents about three to four months of profit and about one month of revenue for Meta.

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It also does not address some content Meta researchers found particularly problematic, including posts that made Instagram users uncomfortable with their body image.

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Governments around the world are trying to curb children's access to harmful online content, including a ban in Australia on social media for children under 16.

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Meta shares rose as much as 4.1%, and closed up 1.1%.

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California could receive a $2.2 billion payout, while New York could receive $1.1 billion.

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Some states will deposit funds in general accounts, while others will earmark portions to address children's mental health.

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Meta plans to publish a letter on Thursday in national newspapers to push TikTok and YouTube to improve protections for children.

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She had overseen the trial that began on August 18.

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The Meta trial included claims by California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey that the company's conduct violated state consumer protection laws.

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It also included claims by 29 states that Meta violated the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act by knowingly collecting personal data from children without parental consent, and using the data to train generative AI.

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Meta had long argued that it could not have misled consumers because "social media addiction" was not a recognized psychiatric condition.

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Also in March, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Alphabet's Google negligent in designing their platforms, and ordered them to pay $6 million to a 20-year-old woman who said she became addicted to Instagram and YouTube as a child.

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Those companies were not immediately available for comment.

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Gonzalez Rogers oversees many of these cases.

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Meta and Google have said they will appeal those verdicts.

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Last month, the European Commission threatened to fine Meta unless it changed some product features, after preliminarily finding that the company breached a 2022 European Union regulation governing the removal of harmful content by large online platforms.

A spokesperson said the commission remains in dialogue with Meta on possible changes.

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Meta said it will pay out 70% of the settlement fund to the states in annual installments over the next decade — the remaining 30% will be paid only if YouTube and TikTok agree to make payments to the states and similar changes to their apps.

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The company acknowledged in its most recent earnings report that the youth safety-related trials posed a risk of "material loss" for the company.

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The state attorneys general had accused Meta of intentionally designing features — such as an infinitely scrolling feed, algorithmic recommendations and frequent notifications — to hook kids and teens.

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As part of the settlement, Meta said it is "investing in even stronger technology" to catch teens who misrepresent their age — but also called on app stores to help with age verification.

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Still, other advocates called on Congress to pass a federal law that codifies online safety measures like the ones agreed to in the settlement that would apply across all social media platforms.

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The group represents parents who say their children died because of social media harms.

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Not even a quarter of the way into an expected 19-day federal trial over Meta's alleged failure to protect young users, the social media giant agreed to settle the case.

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Earlier this year, it lost state trials in California and New Mexico, notching nearly $1 billion in penalties.

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Those limits don't apply, however, to "longform content"—defined as audio or video at least 22 minutes long—or messaging, meaning teens can still DM for as long as they please.

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The apps will also be blocked between midnight and 6 am for teens by default, and notifications will be muted between 8 am and 3 pm—from August 15 to June 15—to minimize distractions during school hours.

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Four of the states—California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey—alleged Meta deceived parents with misleading statements about protections for adolescent users and that it engaged in unconscionable practices in designing some features for Facebook and Instagram.

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The states began presenting their case by calling on current and former Meta employees to describe an alleged culture of maintaining or growing engagement above all else, to the detriment of young users.

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An academic psychologist testified that adolescents, and especially girls, who spent more hours on social media were more likely to be depressed or unhappy, which contributed to increases in teen loneliness and self-harm over the past 15 years.

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This week, the attorneys general coalition zeroed in on Instagram's well-being team, which has been developing features to address some of the concerns about teen social media use since 2018.

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Testimony from a former Meta data scientist, current product design director, and veteran executive Mosseri started to show how the states hoped to convince Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, and the eight jurors advising her, that Meta engaged in unfair and deceptive business.

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On Tuesday, the focus was largely on a feature called Take a Break, which reminds teen users to limit extended use of Instagram.

According to testimony, less than 1 percent of Instagram's weekly teen users had actually activated the feature months after its launch.

Two years in, adoption still sat at only 1.8 percent.

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Uptake for another usage-limiting feature, called Quiet Mode, was barely any better, documents presented during the trial on Tuesday showed.

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Meta, which already uses ID checks and face analysis to verify user ages, said it agreed to impose on people under 18 a "default two-hour daily time limit that teens can only turn off with a parent's permission," a default block between midnight and 6 am, and a school mode in which notifications are muted by default from 8 am to 3 pm.

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The states and Meta urged a judge to approve the 10-year settlement in a filing today in US District Court for the Northern District of California.

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The states and Meta urged a judge to approve the 10-year settlement in a filing today in US District Court for the Northern District of California.

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Texas was not part of the case, but Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton simultaneously announced a $1 billion settlement of his own lawsuit against Meta.

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A trial involving four of the states involved in the settlement—California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey—began this month after an appeals court rejected Meta's claim of legal immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

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A trial involving four of the states involved in the settlement—California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey—began this month after an appeals court rejected Meta's claim of legal immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

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The multi-state settlement says that states and territories can use the money for a variety of purposes, such as youth crisis services, after-school or summer programs, public health advertising, youth mental health programs, funding outdoor activities, training for medical providers on interactive media use and body dysmorphia, and grants to school districts and local governments.

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The attorneys general did not confirm that figure but said in a court filing that "Meta's concern over the potential size of the requested remedies rings hollow in light of the evidence the AGs will present at trial. The AGs will prove that Meta deceived the public about the safety of its platforms while deliberately designing them to induce compulsive use and increase revenue."

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Meta, which still denies the states' allegations, reported revenue of $60.8 billion and net income of $15.8 billion in Q2 2026.

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Meta must use age-verification systems to detect users under 18 and remove kids under 13, will have to "bring on an independent auditor with expansive access to information and resources," and "be subject to an injunction prohibiting it from making further false, misleading, or deceptive statements around its safety features," Bonta's office said.

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In addition to the requirements mentioned earlier in this article, the AG's press release said that Meta agreed to "an enhanced mechanism for teens to report potentially harmful content and a requirement that Meta respond to 90 percent of those reports within six hours; a ban on displaying numbers of likes or reactions to users under 18; a ban on cosmetic procedure image filters for users under 18; and an option for users under 18 to have a non-personalized feed, meaning a feed that doesn't use an algorithm to target them with content aimed to keep them endlessly scrolling."

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The state legislature and governor will have control over how much of it is spent, "but in the proposed settlement it is earmarked for purposes related to the prevention or remediation of mental health or other harms to young Californians associated with social media use," Bonta's office said.

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California said it could receive at least $1.5 billion, while New Jersey expects to receive at least $525 million.

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Massachusetts said it was in line for at least $366 million.

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Virginia's share is worth $353 million.

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Georgia is expected to receive nearly $100 million from the settlement and could ultimately receive as much as $135 million, according to the attorney general's office.

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Rob Bonta, the attorney general of California, where Meta is based, said the settlement will force the company to overhaul its approach to designing and operating social media.

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California could receive between $1.5 billion and $2.1 billion, while the District of Columbia expects to receive between $90.3 million and $129.3 million.

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The company must block children's access to feeds between midnight and 6 a.m., silence notifications from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. and restrict notifications during weekday school hours.

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The settlement is slated to direct more than $134 million to the state.

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Other requirements include stronger age-verification systems, improved parental controls, and enhanced safeguards against bullying and content promoting eating disorders, suicide, or self-harm.

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Meta said the agreement involves approximately $18 billion under its accounting description and that it expects to record a roughly $10 billion legal expense in the third quarter of 2026.

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Once the court enters a final judgment, the parties will waive their rights to appeal.

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