Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, agreed Wednesday to pay up to $18 billion to resolve claims brought by 48 states.
The multi-billion-dollar settlement comes with sweeping new restrictions on how young people use the social media platforms.
The states accused the tech giant of designing its platforms to keep children and teens engaged while misleading the public about potential harms.
“While it’s just a settlement, not a court case, it is an admission,” South Carolina Republican state Rep. Brandon Guffey told CBN News.
Guffey knows the harms of social media firsthand. In 2022, his 17-year-old son Gavin took his own life after being sexually extorted on Instagram.
“Gavin was reached out to by someone pretending to be a girl online,” Guffey explained. “As soon as they began to exchange images with one another the person then used those images to start blackmailing him, demanding money and threatening that they’re gonna let these go viral.”
The lawsuit by the states also claimed Meta improperly collected personal information from children.
The company said in a statement, “Ensuring teens have a safe and productive experience on our platforms is an absolute imperative…. that’s why we partnered with state attorneys general to set a new industry standard.”
Haley McNamara of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation said the settlement holds Meta accountable for protecting children.
“We think it’s a really important step forward for online safety to no longer be viewed as optional,” McNamara said in an interview with CBN News.
Under the agreement, Meta will make significant changes to its platforms, including:
- Daily time limits for children,
- Nighttime restrictions,
- Fewer notifications during school hours,
- Stronger age-verification and parental controls,
- More safeguards on content with bullying, eating disorders, suicide and self-harm.
“The head of Instagram testified ahead of court that some of their optional teen protections were only taken up by 1 to 2 percent of teens,” McNamara explained. “But now that they have been sued and settled, they are agreeing to enforce things like daily time limits, and they’re rolling this out in the next couple of months. That shows us that they have long had the technology and ability to do better to protect kids by default, and they chose to do it.”
For Guffey, who has filed a separate suit against Instagram, the new rules pave the way to keep more kids safe.
“I can’t save Gavin, but I can always fight to save the next child. And at the end of the day, the measurement of this settlement is not going to be how many billions of dollars that it is. It’s going to be how many mothers and fathers still get to tuck their children in at the end of the night,” Guffey said.
Meanwhile, as Meta has agreed to “meaningful” changes, it avoided potential damages in the tens of billions of dollars from a jury trial.
