Meta Settles 48 States’ Lawsuit for ‘Peanuts,’ Billions for Government, Not Child Victims

Social media giant Meta, the owner of social media platforms Facebook and Instagram, will settle a case by a bipartisan group of states for less than 2 percent of what the case originally asked for and provides nothing to children harmed by social media. The agreement represents a little more than the company’s profit in the 2nd quarter of 2026.Meta agreed to pay $17.1 billion and implement sweeping child-safety reforms under a landmark nationwide settlement with 52 states, territories, and the District of Columbia but the full payment hinges on industrywide changes. Texas will get an additional $1 billion as part of a separate agreement announced Wednesday. The payment is a fraction of the yearly revenue for Meta, which reported $201 billion in revenue in 2025. Two states that sued Meta — New Mexico and Florida — did not join the settlement. “The payouts are peanuts compared to the profound harms Meta’s profit-driven addictive features inflicted on kids, and a slap on the wrist for a trillion-dollar corp that’ll pay more to lawyers than to the states,” Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, said in an X post. “We’ll see them at trial,” Mr. Utheier added.The lawsuit, filed by a bipartisan group of attorneys general, claimed Meta designed Instagram with addictive features, knowingly exposed young users to serious mental harms, and intentionally misled the public about the safety of its platforms.“Today, we have secured a settlement with Meta that will make social media less dangerous for our kids and make a world of a difference for children and their families,” California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, said in a release.The money paid by Meta will come in yearly payments over the next decade and will fund, in part, youth mental health programs and crisis intervention services in the states. Approximately a third of the settlement payment is tied to Google’s YouTube and TikTok making changes to their platforms and making billions in voluntary payments.The settlement still needs court approval but calls for Instagram and Facebook to implement two-hour daily time limits for teens and mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use to interrupt endless scrolling.So-called nighttime blocks would restrict children’s access to the platforms daily from 12 a.m. until 6 a.m. It would eliminate push notifications weekdays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. during the school year and a ban on displaying numbers of likes or reactions to users under the age of 18.The settlement also calls for stronger and more user-friendly parental controls. The settlement would require a majority of the terms to remain in place for 10 years. The plaintiffs called the agreement “an important step forward.”“The relief we are getting in this settlement is very meaningful and well beyond what any court has ordered or is likely to order,” Colorado’s attorney general Paul Weiser said in a release. “The focus of this case was to protect our kids—stopping notifications and alerts at night and when they are in school, encouraging them to take breaks from social media, protecting them against harmful features, implementing age assurance technology, and more.”The settlement also separately resolves the states’ claims against Meta for its sharing of nonpublic information about Facebook users with third parties, like Cambridge Analytica, to garner support for political candidates leading up to the 2016 election. Colorado will receive an additional $11.4 million to settle those claims.The states hope that other platforms that are popular among young users — including TikTok and YouTube — will implement similar guardrails. 30 percent of the Meta settlement payment is required to be paid only if YouTube and TikTok implement a one-hour daily limit, night mode, and age assurance measures. They would also have to match 30 percent of the Meta settlement — about $5.3 billion.Meta released a statement urging TikTok and YouTube to “join us” and adopt the standard to ensure “meaningful progress” in ensuring teens use social media in a healthy and responsible way.“Because teens move fluidly across dozens of apps, we need an industry-wide solution,” Meta’s chief legal officer, C.J. Mahoney, said in a statement.Requests for comment to YouTube and TikTok were not immediately returned.The settlement came in the second week of a trial involving the case in a California courtroom in which four of the states were seeking up to $1.4 trillion in damages. Meta’s chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, was expected to testify.Meta still faces other lawsuits including a federal consolidated case involving social media personal injury claims. Attorneys in that case said they support the settlement, calling it a “major step toward holding Meta accountable” but said they will continue the fight. “We will not rest until every one of these plaintiffs sees justice for the harms caused by all of the defendants’ platforms,” the statement continued.

Meta Settles 48 States’ Lawsuit for ‘Peanuts,’ Billions for Government, Not Child Victims

Meta Settles 48 States’ Lawsuit for ‘Peanuts,’ Billions for Government, Not Child Victims

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