The price tag for years of Instagram feeds, Facebook notifications and algorithms designed to keep young eyes glued to screens has reached Washington, and the check could be enormous.
The District of Columbia is guaranteed more than $90.3 million and could ultimately collect nearly $129.4 million from Meta Platforms Inc. under a sweeping multistate settlement announced Wednesday by D.C. Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb. The agreement settles allegations that the company behind Instagram and Facebook deliberately built addictive products that harmed children while misleading parents and the public about the dangers.
“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,” Schwalb said.
The money makes the settlement a financial bonanza for the District, but the agreement reaches much deeper into the phones of teenagers. It dictates when young people can scroll, how long they can remain on the platforms, what Meta can show them and how the company must determine whether someone claiming to be an adult is actually a child.
Meta will pay at least $12.1 billion to states and territories over 10 years, according to Schwalb’s office. Another $5 billion is tied to what happens elsewhere in the social-media industry, potentially pushing the overall settlement to $17.1 billion.
“Big Tech is finally being held accountable for the harm it is causing, especially to our children’s mental health and safety,” said New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherill, whose state was part of the settlement. “More important, parents and teens will finally get some relief, including groundbreaking new safety features to protect kids online.”
For D.C., the agreement calls for 10 guaranteed installments of about $9.04 million each. An additional roughly $3.9 million per installment could be triggered under provisions tied to adoption of comparable protections by other major social-media companies, bringing the District’s maximum payment to $129,356,761.71.
The settlement identifies Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube as the industry players whose actions could trigger portions of those tougher requirements.
For teenagers, some of the most noticeable changes will arrive not as legal language but as a screen that refuses to keep feeding them content.
Instagram and Facebook must default users ages 13 through 17 to a combined two-hour daily limit. Once the clock runs out, access to covered features shuts down until midnight unless a supervising parent has approved a less restrictive setting. The agreement excludes time spent messaging, adjusting settings and watching certain long-form content.
The platforms must also build interruptions into prolonged use, including what the settlement calls “Productive Pauses,” aimed at breaking the kind of uninterrupted scrolling that can turn a few minutes on a phone into hours.
Nighttime will bring another barrier. From midnight until 6 a.m., teenagers will generally be locked out of Instagram and Facebook feeds, while push notifications must go silent from 10 p.m. until 7 a.m. Parents can make the restrictions stricter or authorize changes to the defaults.
School hours get their own protections. The agreement defines them as 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays between Aug. 15 and June 15, creating another stretch of the day in which Meta’s ability to summon young users back to its apps is restricted.
Meta must also confront one of the oldest loopholes in online child protection: a child simply entering a false birthday.
Within a year, the company must establish an age-assurance system across Instagram and Facebook in the participating jurisdictions. The system must evaluate whether users are teenagers or younger than 13, and the methods must undergo annual third-party testing.
The agreement reaches into the content teenagers encounter as well, including material involving bullying and harassment, suicide and self-harm, eating disorders, nudity, sexual activity, violence, gambling and restricted substances. It also places restrictions on features that encourage social comparison, including certain appearance-altering filters and visible measures of popularity.
An independent auditor will examine whether Meta is actually carrying out the required protections. The auditor is empowered to evaluate implementation, develop or approve methods for measuring compliance and report findings to the states. Final reports must identify material weaknesses, explain the evidence behind them and assess whether Meta corrected the problems.
The settlement money can also reach the same problems the lawsuit accused Meta of helping create. The agreement permits states to use proceeds for youth mental-health programs, crisis intervention and 988 services, after-school and summer programs, digital-wellness education, outdoor activities, digital-literacy counselors, phone-free school initiatives and training for medical providers dealing with interactive-media use and body dysmorphia.
Schwalb called the agreement a “monumental public health victory” and said its impact would extend well beyond the money arriving in government accounts.
“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,” Schwalb said.
Meta, he warned, may simply be the beginning.
“This successful, coordinated multistate litigation has resulted in Meta being the first platform to come to the table and agree to such comprehensive reforms,” Schwalb said. “It will not be the last.”
