Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach today announced a landmark $17.1 billion multistate settlement with Meta Platforms, Inc.—one of the largest state consumer protection settlements in history outside of the Big Tobacco settlements of the 1990s. In addition to the payment, Meta must implement a sweeping set of safety features designed to protect children on Instagram and Facebook. The agreement resolves claims by 47 states and D.C., Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands that the company designed Instagram with addictive features, knowingly exposed young users to serious mental harms, and intentionally misled the public about the safety of its platforms, among other things. This settlement is a monumental victory for the protection of America’s children and will fundamentally transform how the entire social media industry designs products for kids and teens. Under the settlement, Kansas will receive more than $134 million.
“This landmark $17.1 billion settlement is the largest Big Tech accountability victory in history and a monumental win for the children of Kansas and America. For too long, Meta deliberately designed Instagram and Facebook with addictive features that preyed on kids’ developing brains, exposed them to serious mental-health harms, and then misled parents about the dangers,” Kobach said.
Kobach also acknowledged that this problem extends well beyond one company and credited Meta for being the first major platform to reach a comprehensive resolution on youth safety.
“Today’s agreement forces Meta to implement the strongest child-safety reforms ever required of any social-media company—hard daily time limits, nighttime and school-hour restrictions, robust age verification, and real parental controls—while delivering more than $134 million directly to Kansas. This settlement marks a down payment on an industry-wide transformation that will finally prioritize our children’s well-being over corporate profits,” Kobach said.
The settlement requires Meta to implement a series of safety features on Instagram and Facebook, including:
● Hard cap daily time limits and “Productive Pauses” for children: for its two platforms, Instagram and Facebook, a combined two-hour daily time limit with mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use and again at 60 and 90 minutes to interrupt endless scrolling. These limits remain in effect for five years. If Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube adopt comparable terms, the daily limit on each platform will drop to 60 minutes for 10 years.
● “Nighttime blocks” restricting children’s access from 12:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.
● Limited school-time access for children, eliminating push notifications on weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. during the school year.
● Robust age assurance measures to more effectively verify the age of young users.
● Safer, age-appropriate content controls, including stronger safeguards against bullying, content promoting eating disorders, and content related to suicide and self-harm.
● Stronger, more user-friendly parental controls.
● Limits on social comparison features, including beauty filters and visible “like” counts linked to poor mental health outcomes in kids and teens.
● Both the implementation and efficacy of the features will be regularly assessed by an independent auditor and the settling states.
These are groundbreaking changes to Instagram and Facebook and more significant and comprehensive than previously ordered by any court. Most importantly, this settlement represents a down payment toward an industry-wide social media experience that allows kids to connect in a healthy way.