Meta Reaches $17 Billion Settlement With States in Landmark Trial Over Teen Social Media Addiction

Barbara Ortutay and Kelvin Chan — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 15:54:49 +0000

This article was originally published in

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — has agreed to pay $17 billion and add stronger child-safety measures to its Facebook and Instagram platforms to end over teen social media addiction and settle claims filed by 47 states, state attorneys general announced Wednesday.

The settlement resolves a pivotal legal case years in the making that sought to hold the tech giant accountable for the role its platforms played in undermining children’s mental health. The effort targeted features designed to hook young people’s attention.

“For years, Meta intentionally deceived the public about the addictive and harmful design features that have wreaked havoc on youth mental health,” Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones said. The settlement “will put an end to these dangerous practices and deliver meaningful relief that will protect children from online harm.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the money would be paid out over 10 years, with the state getting at least $1.5 billion if the settlement is approved by the court. New Jersey expects to receive at least $525 million. Massachusetts said it was in line for at least $366 million. Virginia’s share is worth $353 million.

Meta urges rivals to adopt similar safety measures

Meta said in a blog post that it was “building on our longstanding efforts to empower parents and support teens.”

“Ensuring teens have a safe and productive experience on our platforms is an absolute imperative for Meta,” the company said. “We want to get this right for parents and teens, and that’s why we partnered with state attorneys general to set a new industry standard.”

The company urged rivals TikTok and YouTube to adopt similar safety measures.

The $17 billion settlement is a fraction of Meta’s 2025 revenue of $201 billion.

The agreement cuts short an ongoing court case involving California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey, which were among 29 states that in 2023. CEO Mark Zuckerberg was among those expected to before a jury in federal court in California.

The lawsuit accused Meta of contributing to the youth mental health crisis by deliberately designing features that to its platforms and hiding them from the public. The case also argued that Meta violated federal laws by routinely collecting data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent.

The trial in Oakland, California, with U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers overseeing the proceedings. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, began his testimony late Tuesday and defended Meta’s record and progress on child safety and privacy.

The cases in other states had been expected to go to trial later. In addition, nine attorneys general filed lawsuits in their respective states.

New features to include time limits and curbs on push notifications

Under the proposed settlement, Meta agreed to adopt a series of safety features, including a “hard cap” on daily time limits and pauses for children using Instagram and Facebook.

It will eliminate push notifications during weekday school hours and bring in “robust” age-assurance measures and “age-appropriate” content controls to prevent bullying and harmful material about eating disorders and self-harm.

There will be stronger and more user-friendly parental controls and limits on social comparison features such as “like” counts.

An independent auditor will assess how Meta is implementing the safety features and how effective they are.

Meta put the settlement at $18 billion, a figure that apparently includes a large award for Texas.

The money is to be paid out annually over 10 years, to fund youth online safety initiatives. However, the company said 30% of that amount — about $5.3 billion — will only be released to states if rivals YouTube and TikTok meet two conditions: implementing similar safety features, including a one-hour daily time limit, a nighttime block and age-assurance measures; and paying the same amount, split between the two companies.

Neither YouTube owner Google nor TikTok responded immediately to requests for comments.

Investigation was led by bipartisan coalition

The federal lawsuit was the result of an investigation led by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Vermont. It followed newspaper reports, first by in 2021, that found that the company knew about the harm Instagram can cause teenagers — especially teen girls — when it comes to mental health and body image issues.

Meta has since added a to Instagram, including separate accounts for teenagers with stronger protections around messaging and privacy, along with content restrictions.

But child safety experts, along with some , have long contended that the features are little more than window dressing.

, a former Meta engineering director, said during his testimony last week that Meta consistently prioritized profits over safety in designing its products, focusing on how often and for how long people used them, even if it was detrimental to their mental well-being.

“If you step away from the product, they are not going to make any money,” he said.

While the four states in the Oakland trial did not officially say how much they had been seeking, Meta said in a court filing that financial penalties in the case could amount to as much as $1.4 trillion — a figure legal experts said was unlikely, if not impossible.

‘Alarming’ National Data: Teens Use Cellphones for Quarter of School Day

Marianna McMurdock — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 11:30:00 +0000

As districts and government nationwide consider curbing smartphones’ reach, new research has revealed teens miss at least one and a half hours of school because they are on their phones.

A quarter of the 13-18 year olds in the study used devices for two hours each school day, which lasts around seven hours. The averages outnumber minutes allotted for lunch and period breaks combined, showing youth are distracted by phones throughout huge chunks of class time.

, is the first to accurately paint a picture of adolescent phone behavior by using a third party app to monitor usage over four months in 2023. Previous studies have relied on parent surveys or self-reported estimates.

“That’s pretty alarming … It’s too much, not only because of the missed learning opportunity in the classroom,” said researcher Lauren Hale, sleep expert and professor at Stony Brook’s Renaissance School of Medicine.

“They’re missing out on real life social interaction with peers, which is just as valuable for growth during a critical period of one’s life,” she told ��.

Hale and the other researchers’ early findings come from 117 teens for which they had school data, just one slice of a pool from over 300 participants, which will be analyzed and used to consider how phone usage impacts sleep, obesity, depression and other outcomes.

Teens most often used messaging, Instagram and video streaming platforms. While most spent about 26 minutes on Instagram, in one extreme case, a student was on the app for 269 minutes — nearly 5 hours — during the school day.

Data reveal particular groups of students are using their phones more than their peers: Girls and older kids, aged 16 to 18, spent a half hour above the average 1.5 hours; and Latino and multiracial students spent on average 15 minutes above average.

Additionally, though researchers cannot hypothesize as to why based on the descriptive data, kids who have one or more parents with a college degree used smartphones less during the school day.

The findings are particularly concerning given young people missed key social years with peers during the pandemic, the impact of which is felt in ways big and small, like being hesitant to work with peers in groups.

Teachers in contact with Hale since research went public in early February say of the 1.5 hour average, “that’s too low an estimate. They think we underestimated.”

is among several districts with plans to institute a cellphone ban, though such bans are inconsistently implemented and new research from the UK suggests bans alone .

“These results are consistent, supportive evidence of anecdotal stories from across the country about kids missing out on learning and social opportunities. [They] can help justify efforts to provide a coherent smartphone policy for schools,” said Hale, adding that such policy should not be left up to individual teachers to enforce.