OAKLAND, Calif. — Meta Platforms on Wednesday agreed to pay up to $17.1 billion and rebuild how teenagers use Facebook and Instagram, settling a landmark addiction lawsuit brought by 29 state attorneys general eight days into a jury trial that could have exposed the company to hundreds of billions of dollars in damages.
The agreement, which resolves claims joined by 47 states, the District of Columbia and three U.S. territories, imposes the largest set of design changes ever forced on a social-media company. It arrives one day after Instagram chief Adam Mosseri took the stand in a trial that began Aug. 18 and had been expected to last six weeks.
What the deal does
Under the settlement, teenage accounts will default to a two-hour daily limit on combined Facebook and Instagram use, which only a parent can disable. Push notifications go dark from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. and during school hours unless parents opt in. Meta will hide "like" counts on teens' posts, disable filters that simulate cosmetic procedures, and give teens the option to switch off the recommendation algorithm that personalizes their feeds.
On the platform
The company must also introduce an independently tested age-assurance system with a false-positive rate no higher than 3 percent for users aged 13 to 15 and 10 percent for 16- and 17-year-olds, according to court filings summarized by The Verge. Users who claim to be 18 or older but do not complete the age check within two weeks will face content and messaging restrictions. Meta committed to identify and remove accounts held by children under 13, the California attorney general's office said.
The check
Of the $17.1 billion, at least $12.1 billion will flow to the coalition states over 10 years in annual installments, CBS News reported. A further $5 billion is contingent on YouTube and TikTok reaching matching settlements. Meta struck a separate deal with Texas that lifts the total payout to roughly $18 billion — a fraction of the company's $201 billion in 2025 revenue and well below the roughly $200 billion the states had sought or the $1.4 trillion in maximum penalties the case carried, Al Jazeera reported. Meta shares rose 2.2 percent on Wednesday.
The coalition
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who led the group, said the deal will force the company to "make massive transformations that will reduce the risk of harm from its platforms — and will do it within months." Bonta said the daily cap would drop to one hour if TikTok and YouTube adopt equivalent measures. District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb called the outcome a "monumental public health victory."
The industry ask
Meta chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney said in a statement that the "framework will only work if all our peers join us" and called on TikTok and YouTube to adopt the same rules. The settlement also requires Meta to draw on age signals shared by Apple and Google operating systems, according to The Verge — a policy Meta has separately lobbied Congress and state legislatures to impose on the two device makers.
Meta denied any wrongdoing in agreeing to the settlement and described the coalition as "a bipartisan group of 52 Attorneys General." The attorneys general quoted in Wednesday's announcements — Bonta, Schwalb and New York's Letitia James — are Democrats; no Republican attorney general appeared as a named signatory in the coverage of the day's filings.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who suspended the trial after the deal was announced, said she is inclined to approve the settlement but needs more time to review it. YouTube and TikTok did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Meta's call for them to match the framework.