Meta has agreed to pay $17 billion and add child-safety measures to its Facebook and Instagram platforms to end a landmark trial over teen social media addiction and settle claims filed by 47 states, state attorneys general announced today (Wednesday).
The agreement guarantees $353 million for Virginia alone, making it one of the largest consumer protection settlements in state history outside of settlements with tobacco companies in the 1990s, Attorney General Jay Jones said in a statement.
Virginia’s total claims could exceed $500 million if agreements are secured with other social media platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat, Jones explained during a press call.
Separately, the settlement will also give $11 million to Virginia to resolve claims against Meta for its “sharing of nonpublic information about Facebook users with third parties, like Cambridge Analytica, leading up to the 2016 election,” according to Jones’s office.
“For years, Meta intentionally deceived the public about the addictive and harmful design features that have wreaked havoc on youth mental health,” Jones said. The settlement “will put an end to these dangerous practices and deliver meaningful relief that will protect children from online harm.”
While restitution for individuals isn’t part of settlement, Virginia plans to use its settlement money for remediation and education initiatives, such as “unplug” programs and digital literacy programs for parents, Jones said during the press call. The funds could also support future legal actions “to hold social media companies accountable.”
According to the attorney general’s office, Meta will be required to implement several safety features on Instagram and Facebook under the settlement agreement, including:
- A hard cap on 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 additional pauses at 60 and 90 minutes to interrupt endless scrolling. “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, which have been consistently linked to poor mental health outcomes in children and teens.
- Both the implementation and efficacy of the features will be regularly assessed by an independent auditor and the settling states.
The settlement still needs to be formally accepted by the judge in the case, Jones noted. If it is approved, Virginia will receive its first payment within 30 days, followed by a subsequent payment at the beginning of January.
“This is comprehensive, this is historic, this is a shift in how Meta operates” that will have long-lasting impacts, the Virginia attorney general said of the agreement.
Implementation of the safety features will depend on the exact terms of the settlement, but Jones stated that Meta won’t be allowed to just apply superficial reforms. A third-party monitor will be assigned to ensure the tech giant meets its obligations.
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 its rivals to adopt similar safety measures.
The $17 billion settlement is a fraction of Meta’s 2025 revenue of $201 billion.
The settlement comes from a federal lawsuit filed by California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey, which were among 29 states that sued Meta in 2023. However, it cuts short a trial that was expected to see CEO Mark Zuckerberg take the stand 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 addict children to its platforms and hiding them from the public. It also argued that Meta violated federal laws by routinely collecting data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent.
The trial kicked off last week 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.
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 The Wall Street Journal 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 host of safety features 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 former Meta employees, have long contended that the features are little more than window dressing.
Arturo Béjar, 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.
