GoKawiilMeta has agreed to pay up to $18 billion to settle claims from 29 U.S. states over children’s safety.
The lawsuit alleged that the social media giant knowingly designed platforms like Instagram and Facebook to addict children, despite knowing about the harms the platforms could pose to young users. The states also claimed that Meta knowingly collected data from children without parental knowledge, which violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
By settling, Meta is not admitting that it’s guilty of these claims, but it shows the company’s reluctance to move forward with a jury trial.
Meta is framing its settlement as a call to action for YouTube and TikTok to adopt a set of protections for teens and controls for parents, which it developed in collaboration with 52 state attorneys general. Pending judicial approval, these protections will include the following terms, which will remain for 10 years:
A default two-hour daily time limit, cumulative across both Facebook and Instagram; at 60 and 90 minutes, teens will be alerted about their daily usage, and they will also see prompts at 15-minute intervals to “encourage intentional use,” per Meta’s description
A default block from Meta’s apps between midnight and 6 AM (known as “Night Mode”), plus muted notifications from 8 AM to 3 PM, when teens should be in school (“School Mode”)
A default block for teens on seeing the number of likes and reactions on both their own posts and others’ posts
A block for teens on using what Meta describes as “extreme makeup filters,” building on its existing block of cosmetic surgery filters
Further investment in age assurance technology to proactively identify accounts that might belong to users under 13 years old, or accounts that might belong to teens but were registered with an adult birthday
While Meta already defaults teens into private Facebook and Instagram accounts, the company says it will strengthen its work to prevent adults from finding, following, and interacting with teens. Meta has also vowed to strengthen its existing parental controls and improve its response times to harmful content reports from teens.
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