A California federal judge approved the settlement on Wednesday, Aug. 26, bringing an early end to a trial that began on August 18. The case involved allegations that Meta misled the public about the safety of its platforms and violated state consumer protection laws and federal child privacy rules.
The settlement covers 47 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands. Meta will make guaranteed payments of about $12.7 billion, with the total potentially rising to around $18 billion if other major social media platforms adopt similar protections.
Under the agreement, teenagers aged 13 to 17 will face a default cumulative limit of two hours of daily use across Facebook and Instagram, with parents able to modify the setting. If Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube adopt similar measures, the limit could fall to one hour.
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Meta will also block access to its platforms between midnight and 6 a.m. by default and mute most push notifications between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. during school hours. Teenagers will receive prompts after 15 minutes of continuous use and additional notifications when they reach 60 and 90 minutes.
Other measures include expanded parental controls, stronger age verification, restrictions on age-inappropriate content, the option to use a chronological feed rather than an algorithmically driven one, default disabling of autoplay and restrictions on extreme makeup and cosmetic filters.
Parents who activate the controls will also receive information about their teenagers’ usage and alerts in certain circumstances, including when a teen first communicates directly with an adult user.
Meta denied wrongdoing as part of the settlement. The company said the measures were intended to help create a safer experience for young users and called on other social media companies to adopt similar protections.
The settlement does not require Meta to eliminate personalized recommendations or targeted advertising, and does not cover some content that Meta’s own researchers had identified as potentially harmful to teenagers.
The agreement also resolves state claims related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, with Meta agreeing to pay an additional $459 million over allegations concerning the sharing of Facebook users’ nonpublic information with third parties.
California is expected to receive about $2.2 billion under the settlement, while New York could receive $1.1 billion. Pennsylvania is set to receive at least $516 million, with its payout potentially reaching nearly $729 million if the protections are adopted across the industry.
The settlement follows years of litigation accusing Meta of designing its platforms to encourage excessive use among children and teenagers while failing to adequately address potential mental health and privacy risks.
The trial had featured evidence from millions of internal Meta documents, including research, emails and employee communications. State lawyers argued that Meta knew children under 13 were using its platforms but did not do enough to prevent them from creating accounts.
Meta maintained that it had invested heavily in youth safety and had introduced measures to make its platforms safer.
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Florida did not join the settlement and plans to continue litigating against Meta. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier criticized the agreement as insufficient, saying the payments were small compared with the harm allegedly caused by the company’s platforms.
New Mexico also remained outside Wednesday’s agreement after securing separate rulings against Meta, while Texas reached its own settlement worth about $1 billion.
The agreement could have implications beyond Meta as governments and regulators in the US and elsewhere intensify efforts to restrict children’s exposure to potentially harmful online content. Meta has urged TikTok and YouTube to adopt the same safeguards, arguing that teenagers can simply move to other platforms when restrictions are imposed on one service.
