Attorney General Schwalb Announces That Meta Will Pay Up to $17.1 Billion for Exploiting Kids with Intentionally Addictive Social Media Platforms

Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb today announced a landmark multistate settlement with Meta Platforms, Inc. (Meta). It is the largest state consumer protection settlement in history outside of the Big Tobacco settlements of the 1990s. The District will receive at least $90,395,940 and up to $129,356,762 to resolve the lawsuit the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) filed alleging that Meta has caused long-lasting psychological damage to children through its exploitative, addictive social media platforms, Instagram and Facebook, while at the same time deceiving the public about the risks associated with using those platforms. In addition, Meta must implement a sweeping set of safety features designed to protect children. The agreement resolves claims by 51 states and territories.

"Meta intentionally exploited kids for profit and then lied about it, claiming its products were safe when its own internal research confirmed the platforms were addictive and harmful," said Attorney General Schwalb. "This is a monumental public health victory for young people in DC and across the country, and the safety features Meta is required to install will fundamentally and immediately change how young people use Instagram and Facebook. The physical, mental, and emotional harms that intentionally addictive social media platforms inflict on youth - and particularly teenage girls - are widespread across the tech industry, and this successful, coordinated multistate litigation has resulted in Meta being the first platform to come to the table and agree to such comprehensive reforms. It will not be the last."

In total, Meta, over a ten-year period, will pay at least $12.1 billion to resolve the states' lawsuits. The total dollar amount is contingent on future settlements with other social media companies. Meta will pay an additional $5 billion-increasingly the total settlement amount to $17.1 billion-and enhance the new safety features it is implementing if and when other major social media companies also agree to adopt these features.

The safety features that Meta is required to implement include:

● Hard cap daily time limits and "Productive Pauses" for children for its two platforms, Instagram and Facebook. Meta will adopt 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 to feeds from 12:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m and silencing notifications from 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 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 for kids.

● Regular assessment by an independent auditor of the implementation and efficacy of the safety features, with oversight by the settling states.

These groundbreaking changes to Instagram and Facebook are more consequential and comprehensive than previously ordered by any court.

The settlement agreement is available here.

Lawsuit Background

Beginning in 2021, nearly every attorney general in the country cooperated to investigate the social media industry for designing and promoting platforms to children despite known risks and harms. This bipartisan, nationwide investigation found that Meta, with the goal of driving ever-increasing advertising revenue, designed Facebook and Instagram's features to addict children while internally documenting the resulting mental health harms and actively misleading parents. In October 2023, 42 attorneys general, including D.C. Attorney General Schwalb, sued Meta. Since then, OAG has been litigating its own case in DC Superior Court; several other states have been similarly litigating against Meta in their state courts and 30+ states have been litigating together in Federal Court in California.

The work OAG has done revealed that Meta's lawyers attempted to avoid the disclosure of internal research confirming Meta's knowledge of the adverse impact its platforms were having on young people. In internal documents, Meta researchers relayed advice from Meta's counsel that directed the removal of portions of documents showing Meta's knowledge of teen users' developmental vulnerability in order to try to limit Meta's liability in potential lawsuits and investigations by government agencies. (OAG's unredacted complaint, which details this internal Meta research, is available here.)

OAG's lawsuit exposed the exploitative and dangerous features of Meta's platforms. While the Federal Court hearing the multistate case dismissed claims based on most of those features, the DC Superior Court authorized OAG to continue to challenge all of those features.

For OAG, this matter was handled by Director of the Office of Consumer Protection Kevin Vermillion, Deputy Director Emily Holness, and former Director Adam Teitelbaum.

Attorney General Schwalb is joined by the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, 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.

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