Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has agreed to an 18 billion dollar settlement to resolve claims that its platforms harmed the mental health of young people. According to FOX 26, nearly every US state had joined the lawsuit, which alleged the social networks caused long-term mental health damage to young users and created addiction to their sites. Meta will now have to put safety measures in place to protect children, and states including Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia are set to receive hundreds of millions of dollars, though the company is not accepting any guilt.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has agreed to an 18 billion dollar settlement to resolve claims that its platforms harmed the mental health of young people. According to FOX 26, nearly every US state had joined the lawsuit, which alleged that the social networks caused long-term mental health damage to young users and created an addiction to their sites.
As part of the deal, Meta will now have to put safety measures in place designed to protect children on its platforms. The settlement, FOX 26 reports, will require the company to fundamentally change the way Facebook and Instagram operate, including putting limits on the endless scrolling that has kept many young users on the apps for long stretches of time.
Under the agreement, states that took part are set to receive substantial sums. FOX 26 reports that Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia will each receive hundreds of millions of dollars from Meta. The company, however, is not accepting any guilt as part of the settlement, according to the report.
District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb, speaking to FOX 26, said that for years Meta had been preying on and exploiting young people for profit while misrepresenting to parents and communities that its platforms were safe. He argued the company knew the apps were not only addictive but were causing serious psychological harm, particularly to teenage girls.
Schwalb described the platforms' recommendation systems as intentionally addictive, comparing them to what he called digital nicotine. He said the goal of the design was to keep users' eyes on the screen for as long as possible in order to generate additional advertising revenue, and that the settlement would put stops on children being able to scroll endlessly.
The settlement brings to a head a case that had reached a federal trial, in which a coalition of US states accused Meta of deliberately designing Facebook and Instagram to addict young users and harm their mental health. As News 12 New York reported earlier, the states had filed their suit three years ago and were seeking more than one trillion dollars in damages before the matter was resolved.
The outcome is being watched as a potential turning point in the long-running fight over children and social media. The changes required of Meta in how it builds features aimed at, or used by, minors could carry consequences well beyond the states that brought the case, reshaping how the largest social networks are allowed to interact with young users.