Meta to pay up to $18bn to settle claims its platforms harm children | BBC News

(OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA) – Social media giant Meta has agreed to pay up to $18 billion (£13.3 billion, €16.3 billion) to settle claims that its platforms Facebook and Instagram harmed children, marking the company’s largest payment over child safety litigation to date.

A California judge approved the settlement, which requires Meta to pay 48 states, the District of Columbia and three US territories. The agreement also mandates sweeping changes to protect younger users online.

Meta will implement default daily time limits of two hours for teenage accounts on Instagram and Facebook, alongside night-time blocks and reduced notifications during school hours. The company will also introduce improvements to age verification and age restricted content, while additional tools will assist parents and guardians in monitoring their children’s online activity.

Under the agreement, Meta will disable teen users from seeing likes or reactions to posts as a default feature. These changes will not be opt-in features, meaning they will apply across the board.

The settlement comes just over a week after Mark Zuckerberg’s company was put on trial in California. Twenty-nine states were suing Meta, accusing it of engineering Facebook and Instagram deliberately to hook children and of violating child privacy laws. In agreeing to settle, Meta denied all wrongdoing.

The trial was expected to last six to seven weeks. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, had testified for about an hour on Tuesday before the settlement was announced overnight.

Arizona’s attorney general described the settlement as “a down payment that could dramatically change the way that young users experience social media.”

Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont confirmed his state would receive approximately $25 million (£18.5 million, €22.6 million) annually. He said half of the funds would go toward mental health programmes and after school activities.

Meta said on Wednesday that the payment “will be distributed in annual instalments over a 10-year period.”

Despite the settlement, Meta continues to face significant litigation from school districts, local governments and thousands of individuals across the United States who claim they or their family members have suffered mental health and other harms due to the company’s app designs.