by Anna Claire Vollers and Ross Williams, Georgia Recorder, [This article first appeared in the Georgia Recorder, republished with permission]
August 26, 2026
Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, on Wednesday agreed to pay 47 states, the District of Columbia, and a handful of U.S. territories, up to $17.1 billion in penalties over claims that its social media platforms are addictive and a danger to children.
As part of the settlement, Meta also pledged to make changes to Instagram and Facebook that are designed to reduce young people’s use of the platforms.
“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 Washington, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb, a Democrat, in a statement announcing the settlement.
“The physical, mental and emotional harms that intentionally addictive social media inflict on youth — and particularly teenage girls — are widespread across the tech industry, and this successful, coordinated multistage litigation has resulted in Meta being the first platform to come to the table and agree to such comprehensive reforms,” he said.
“It will not be the last.”
The settlement ended a high-stakes, landmark case, filed in 2023, in which states said Meta purposely designed its social media platforms with addictive features, that Meta knew it was exposing children to serious mental harms, and that it intentionally misled the public about the safety of those platforms.
New protections for teens, controls for parents included in Meta settlement
Time Limit: A default two-hour daily time limit that can only be turned off with a parent’s permission. Time spent scrolling on Facebook and Instagram counts toward the total.
Night mode: A default block from Meta apps between midnight and 6 a.m.
School Mode: Notifications will be muted by default between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. During those hours, young people will no longer receive push notifications, except for direct messages and alerts about their account security or safety.
Regular Prompts: Young users will receive prompts after every 15 minutes of continuous screen time on Facebook and Instagram.
Algorithmic Feed Control: Young users will be able to choose a non-algorithmic feed — one that isn’t personalized by Meta’s recommendation system.
Autoplay Control: Young users will be able to turn off autoplay, so that content no longer automatically plays.
Hidden Likes: Young people won’t see the number of likes and reactions on posts — both their own and those from others — by default.
Disabling cosmetic surgery and extreme makeup filters: Young users will not be able to use extreme makeup filters.
Direct messaging features will be excluded from Night Mode, Time Limit and School Mode restrictions.
Meta has not admitted wrongdoing.
The federal trial began last week in Oakland, California, led by a bipartisan group of attorneys general from California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey.
State officials are calling the settlement the biggest consumer protection win since the Big Tobacco settlements of the 1990s.
Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman, a Republican, said in a statement Wednesday that the lawsuit was “never just about the money.”
“Kids deserve a childhood that isn’t measured in likes and followers,” he said. “The online protections delivered by this settlement will bring a generational change that will make social media platforms safer for Kentucky families.”
In addition to the financial settlement, Meta agreed to make major changes to its Instagram and Facebook features for young users, including a daily time limit, automatic pauses, nighttime blocks that restrict access from midnight to 6 a.m., and stronger safeguards against bullying and harmful content. Most of the updates must be in place for at least a decade.
Meta is trying to drag its competitors along with it. The company agreed to further restrict daily time limits for teens only if TikTok and YouTube agree to adopt comparable measures.
Under the settlement terms, Meta will pay out just 70% (about $12.7 billion) to states unless TikTok and Alphabet-owned YouTube also agree to set one-hour daily time limits for young users, as well as night mode and age assurance measures.
Meta will pay the remaining 30% — $5.3 billion — if the other two companies agree to the new measures and each agrees to pay states about $5.3 billion.
C.J. Mahoney, chief legal officer at Meta, said in a statement that the changes needed to be made across the social media landscape to have an impact.
“Our new Time Limit commitments, Night Mode features and usage limits during school hours set the right path forward for our whole industry, but this framework will only work if all our peers join us,” Mahoney said.
“Because teens move fluidly across dozens of apps, we need an industry-wide solution.”
Settlement money will be paid out to the participating states and territories annually over a decade, based on their populations.
Just three states, Florida, New Mexico and Texas, aren’t part of the settlement. New Mexico won its own lawsuit against Meta earlier this year, when a jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million in damages for violating the state’s consumer protection laws. Texas negotiated its own settlement with Meta that includes a $1 billion payout and a promise of more safety features for children.
While state officials lauded the changes coming to Instagram and Facebook as wins for child safety, some free speech advocates expressed concern over broader implications of the new restrictions.
Kate Ruane, director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a civil rights organization said in a statement that safe and age-appropriate online experiences for children are critical.
“But we also see the potential for significant risks to everyone’s privacy and free expression rights online, especially in the ways this settlement will subject all users to invasive age assurance and limit all kids’ access to content and services regardless of their individual needs,” Ruane said.
Meta and other social media platforms still face thousands of ongoing lawsuits from individuals and school districts across the nation that accuse them of targeting young users with addictive algorithms and inadequate safety measures.
One of those is a lawsuit against Instagram filed by South Carolina state Rep. Brandon Guffey, whose 17-year-old son Gavin died by suicide in 2022. His family said they later learned he was a victim of sexual extortion after being targeted by a scammer on Instagram.
“Scammers put immense pressure and sometimes even a countdown on these teens,” Guffey said in an emailed statement after the settlement announcement. “Gavin didn’t deserve to have less than two hours before he took his life. He deserved to have a parent that was aware of this.”
Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at avollers@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Georgia Recorder, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
More about this story from Georgia
From Georgia Recorder
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said Georgia could receive up to $135 million from the agreement.
Carr called the settlement “a monumental victory for the protection of America’s children.”
“This is a landmark agreement that sets the standard for future cases, and while Meta is the first to come to the table, they shouldn’t be the last,” said Carr, a Republican. “It shouldn’t take lawsuits, legislation or investigations to do the right thing. Keeping our children safe will always be our top priority.”
Last year, the Georgia Senate created a study committee to examine the impact of social media and artificial intelligence on children.
Sen. Shawn Still, a Suwanee Republican, co-chaired the committee along with Atlanta Democratic Sen. Sally Harrell.
In a statement, Still called the settlement a validation of the committee’s work but added that he hopes to see Carr and the other attorneys general press other social media companies to institute child protections.
“Meeting after meeting, speaker after speaker, we heard from parents and experts about how minors are affected,” he said in a statement. “This settlement gives us hope that reform is finally beginning to happen.”
“It cannot be just Meta, however,” he added. “Now is the time for all other major platforms to take responsibility and join Meta in their call to action to reform. YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok and others need to commit to the same terms to protect underaged users.”
Harrell also called the settlement a win for parents and said the Legislature should push for further changes, including restrictions on algorithmic recommendations, AI systems that collect data like watch time, likes and scrolling speed to determine what sort of content to feed a user. Some experts say these algorithms contribute to the addictive nature of these platforms.
Harrell said including an option to turn off algorithmic recommendations isn’t enough because companies can make the option difficult for parents to find.
“Really what it should be and what states need to still work on is turning off the algorithmic recommendations by default,” she said.
Last month, New York state announced rules intended to shut off algorithmic recommendations there.
“There is interest in doing that at the state level, and since it wasn’t included as a requirement of the settlement, I think you will see states still continuing to push that,” Harrell said.
Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jill Nolin for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.