Meta will impose some of the most sweeping restrictions yet on how American teenagers use its platforms
The owner of Instagram and Facebook agreed to pay up to $17 billion to settle a landmark multistate lawsuit accusing it of deliberately designing its platforms to hook children, concealing the risks and improperly collecting data from youngsters. On Wednesday, Meta agreed to put some limits on the feast.
The case began in 2023 when attorneys general from 29 states sued Meta in federal court, alleging that Facebook and Instagram had been deliberately engineered to keep children and teenagers compulsively hooked. They also alleged violations of federal child-privacy law through the collection of information from children under 13 without appropriate parental consent. The original coalition was bipartisan and grew into a much larger settlement involving 47 states, the US Capital and several U.S. territories.
The case had become particularly uncomfortable for Meta after testimony from Arturo Bejar, a former safety engineer. who told the court that he repeatedly raised concerns about harmful experiences affecting young users and alleged that Meta’s culture prioritized engagement and growth over safety. The states accused the company of knowing that its products could contribute to mental and physical harm while misleading parents and the public about those dangers. The trial, which began only last week, was supposed to continue for weeks, potentially putting CEO Mark Zuckerberg on the witness stand, before Wednesday’s legal equivalent of the emergency exit. He portrayed a company that understood the problem but struggled to put child welfare ahead of the machinery that generated advertising revenue. The allegations were hardly isolated. Previous revelations had already exposed internal concerns about Instagram’s effects on teenagers, particularly girls and issues involving body image and mental health. Critics are now alleging that social media companies have effectively created digital opioids for children: products engineered to exploit the same basic human vulnerabilities that make gambling, cigarettes and addictive drugs so profitable. The accusation is not simply that teenagers happen to spend too much time online; it is that the business model rewards companies for discovering what keeps a child clicking, scrolling, comparing, reacting and returning.