Attorney General Ford Announces Historic Settlement with Meta that Will Protect Nevada’s Children

Carson City, NV- Today, Attorney General Aaron D. Ford announced a landmark $17.1 billion multistate settlement with Meta Platforms, Inc. - one of the largest state consumer protection settlements in history outside the Big Tobacco settlements of the 1990s. In addition to the payment, Meta must implement a sweeping set of safety features designed to protect children on Instagram and Facebook. The agreement resolves claims by 47 states; Washington, D.C.; Puerto Rico; American Samoa; and the Northern Mariana Islands that the company designed Instagram with addictive features; knowingly exposed young users to serious mental harms; and intentionally misled the public about the safety of its platforms, among other things. This settlement is a monumental victory for the protection of America's children and will fundamentally transform how the entire social media industry designs products for kids and teens. Under the settlement, the money that Nevada will receive could be as much as $255,930,000.00, with a guaranteed amount of $178,140,750.00 payable over 10 years.

"This settlement is a historic win for the safety and protection of our state's youth and will hopefully be the first step toward a future in which social media companies do not treat our children as disposable products," said Attorney General Ford. "This settlement will bring money into Nevada that will go directly toward educating and protecting our children, but, most importantly, it will implement changes that will drastically change how children can interact with Meta's products. This settlement is strong, but it is not the end. I will continue to work to hold accountable the remaining social media companies who have unlawfully neglected to protect our children."

The settlement requires Meta to implement a series of safety features on Instagram and Facebook, including:

• Hard cap daily time limits and "Productive Pauses" for children: for its two platforms, Instagram and Facebook, a combined two-hour daily time limit with mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use and again at 60 and 90 minutes to interrupt endless scrolling. These limits remain in effect for five years. If Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube adopt comparable terms, the daily limit on each platform will drop to 60 minutes for 10 years.
• "Nighttime blocks" restricting children's access from 12:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.
• Limited school-time access for children, eliminating push notifications on weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. during the school year.
• Robust age assurance measures to more effectively verify the age of young users.
• Safer, age-appropriate content controls, including stronger safeguards against bullying; content promoting eating disorders; and content related to suicide and self-harm.
• Stronger, more user-friendly parental controls.
• Limits on social comparison features, including beauty filters and visible "like" counts, that have been linked to poor mental health outcomes in kids and teens.
• Both the implementation and efficacy of the features will be regularly assessed by an independent auditor and the settling states.

These are groundbreaking changes to Instagram and Facebook and more significant and comprehensive than previously ordered by any court. And perhaps most importantly, this settlement represents a down payment toward an industry-wide social media experience that allows kids to connect in a healthy way.

Attorney General Ford has made the defense of Nevada's children from predatory social media companies a priority during his time in office. The Office of the Attorney General currently has lawsuits pending against TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Discord and Kik that accuse these companies of using harmful design features; failing to implement common-sense safety measures for children; and misleading the public regarding child users' safety.

Several of the state's lawsuits also include products liability claims and economic damages that are unique to the Nevada Attorney General's jurisdiction to pursue consumer protection claims on behalf of Nevadans. In April, Attorney General Ford announced a first-of-its-kind agreement with the interactive game platform Roblox that will implement much-needed changes to protect Nevada's children.

Beginning in 2021, nearly every attorney general in the country cooperated to investigate the social media industry for designing and promoting platforms to children and teens despite known harms. After a bipartisan, nationwide investigation found that Meta designed Instagram's features to addict children while internally documenting the resulting mental health harms and failing to warn parents, many attorneys general sued Meta individually or as part of a consolidated federal lawsuit. This settlement resolves those cases and claims by the other settling states and territories. The settlement also resolves the states' claims against Meta for its sharing of nonpublic information about Facebook users with third parties, like Cambridge Analytica, leading up to the 2016 election.

In addition to Attorney General Ford, the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Northern Mariana Islands, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming joined the settlement.

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