META Settles Multi-state Child Safety And Privacy Litigation

Meta Platforms, Inc. and a coalition of state attorneys general reached a proposed $17 billion settlement– yes, that is billion with a B- on August 26, 2026, resolving the consolidated child safety and online privacy claims in In re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation, No. 4:22-md-03047-YGR (N.D. Cal.).  Meta will pay the penalty to the states over ten years and will implement a set of enforceable design changes to Facebook and Instagram.  Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers must still approve the agreement.  According to the California Attorney General’s office, the agreement resolves the cases and claims of 51 of the consolidated actions.  The settlement came during the second week of a trial that Reuters reported was scheduled to run about six weeks.

California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey tried the case for the coalition of twenty-nine states that sued Meta in 2023.  The states alleged that Meta engineered its platforms to addict minors, understood the resulting risks, and concealed that knowledge from the public.  Alongside the state consumer protection counts, the states pleaded violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act premised on Meta’s collection of data from children under thirteen, even though Meta’s stated policy bars those users, who the states said routinely register with false birth dates.  Meta denied the allegations throughout the proceeding.  Testimony from two witnesses framed the states’ case: Arturo Béjar, a former Facebook engineering director who worked on safety issues from 2009 to 2015 and returned as an independent contractor from 2019 to 2021, who testified that internal research showed young users encountering harmful experiences at rates well above what the company disclosed, and Instagram head Adam Mosseri, whom the states confronted over public statements promoting the “Take a Break” feature when an internal document admitted at trial showed that 1.8 percent of teens used it.

The injunctive terms will change Meta’s products more than the payment will.  Meta agreed to a default two-hour daily usage limit for users under eighteen and an overnight lockout from midnight to 6:00 a.m., each removable only by a parent; default notification blocks during nighttime and school hours; suppression of like and reaction counts on minors’ posts; elimination of cosmetic surgery filters for minors; and an option for young users to select a non-personalized, non-algorithmic feed.  Meta must give an independent auditor broad access to company information and a direct line to the attorneys general, and a separate injunction bars Meta from making false, misleading, or deceptive statements about its safety features.  The no-misrepresentation injunction deserves the attention of any platform operator, because it converts safety marketing claims into a representation the attorneys general can enforce directly, without proving a separate consumer protection violation.