Meta Settlement Reaches $18 Billion, 48 States

Meta will pay up to $18 billion to settle claims by most U.S. states that Facebook and Instagram were designed to addict children — a larger figure, covering more states, than the totals first reported when the deal was announced Wednesday.

Reuters reports the settlements include more than $17.6 billion in payments to 48 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands, plus a separate $459 million resolving state privacy claims tied to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. That is why the number is described as up to $18 billion across settlements, plural, and not as a single payment. The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press both put the headline figure at $18 billion with 48 state attorneys general.

What Meta agreed to do

For the next decade, according to Reuters, Meta will restrict teenagers' use of Facebook and Instagram to two hours a day and block all use from midnight to 6 a.m., absent parental consent. It will also strengthen measures meant to keep children away from age-restricted content. Those limits could be tightened if other social media companies adopt similar terms.

Part of the payout is contingent on whether Alphabet's YouTube and ByteDance's TikTok impose comparable protections for children, Reuters reports; neither was immediately available for comment. Gizmodo reads that structure as Meta trying to spread the cost of the settlement to its competitors, and notes Snap was left out of the arrangement.

What it does not do

The settlement does not require Meta to abandon personalized recommendations or targeted advertising, and Meta denied wrongdoing in agreeing to settle, per Reuters, which puts the total payout at roughly three to four months of profit for the company. "Ensuring teens have a safe and productive experience on our platforms is an absolute imperative for Meta," the company said in a blog post quoted by Reuters. "We want to get this right for parents and teens."

Two states are still fighting

New Mexico and Florida did not sign on. "The payouts to the states are peanuts compared to the profound harms Meta's profit-driven addictive features have inflicted on our children," Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said in a statement quoted by Reuters. "We'll see them at trial."