By Hank Russell
New York State is about to receive a sizable amount of money from a recent settlement the state reached with a national social media company.
According to Attorney General Letitia James, New York is expected to get between $819 million and $1.15 billion from a nationwide settlement of up to $17.1 billion with Meta — the largest settlement with one single company in the Office of the Attorney General’s (OAG) history.
In 2023, James and a coalition of 32 other attorneys general sued Meta for designing and implementing features that it knew to be harmful to children and teens in order to maximize their time on its social media platforms. According to the lawsuit that was filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the plaintiffs claimed that Meta “used their technology and Social Media Platforms, Facebook and Instagram, … to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare youth and teens.”
The lawsuit went on to say that the California-based social media company “has repeatedly misled the public about the dangers of its Platforms and ignored the risks these Platforms have posed to the mental and physical wellbeing of America’s youth, thereby engaging in deceptive and unlawful conduct in violation of state unfair and deceptive acts and practices (‘UDAP’) laws.” The AGs also accused Meta of violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) “by collecting, retaining, and using the data of residents of their states who were under the age of thirteen.”
Meta denied the allegations and “asserted that its actions were reasonable and lawful at all times,” according to the lawsuit.
In addition to the settlement payment, Meta must make significant changes to limit the time that users under the age of 18 can spend on its platforms, the content they see, and the addictive features to which they are exposed. Meta will also take steps to verify the ages of its users to identify those under 18, using a process similar to New York’s Safe for Kids Act, which was advanced by James and signed into law by Governor Kathy Hochul in 2024. The settlement builds on the Safe for Kids Act’s requirements to provide even stronger protection for New York children online, the OAG says.
Meta will also impose strict time limits on all users under 18, limiting them to two hours per day across Facebook and Instagram, with exceptions for messaging features. Users under 18 will also not be able to access these platforms between midnight and 6 a.m. or receive push notifications between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. In addition, Meta will limit notifications during school hours. To encourage young people to break the cycle of endless scrolling and take breaks, Meta will pause content and send mindfulness reminders to users under 18 after 60 and 90 minutes of cumulative use every day, and send reminders during any session of continuous use that lasts longer than 15 minutes.
Meta must also take a variety of steps to prevent minors from being shown inappropriate and unhealthy content on its platforms. Users under 18 will be given the option to select non-algorithmic feeds, showing content only from accounts that the user has followed in chronological order. Parents will have the ability to enable a non-algorithmic feed as the default for their children if they are using Meta’s Parental Supervision feature. In addition, young users will be barred from seeing “likes” and other reactions on posts and will have in-app tools to report inappropriate, offensive, unwanted, or illegal content.
Additionally, Meta will also impose strict time limits on all users under 18, limiting them to two hours per day across Facebook and Instagram, with exceptions for messaging features. Users under 18 will also not be able to access these platforms between midnight and 6 a.m. or receive push notifications between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. In addition, Meta will limit notifications during school hours. The social media company will pause content and send mindfulness reminders to users under 18 after 60 and 90 minutes of cumulative use every day, and send reminders during any session of continuous use that lasts longer than 15 minutes.
Users under 18 will be given the option to select non-algorithmic feeds, showing content only from accounts that the user has followed in chronological order. Parents will have the ability to enable a non-algorithmic feed as the default for their children if they are using Meta’s Parental Supervision feature. In addition, young users will be barred from seeing “likes” and other reactions on posts and will have in-app tools to report inappropriate, offensive, unwanted, or illegal content.
Users must have a parent’s explicit permission to disable these time and content restrictions. The restrictions will last at least five years on Meta’s platforms and will strengthen if other major social media platforms reach similar settlements with states. A second phase of stricter limits lasting ten years will also apply if these other platforms reach settlements. This phase will restrict night access from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. and disable all push notifications. It will also limit users under 18 to 60 minutes on each Meta platform per day.
Meta must also continue to improve its existing content restrictions and account limits that prevent young users from encountering inappropriate content. These existing features include:
- Content policies designed to help limit teens’ exposure to age-inappropriate content;
- A ban on cosmetic filters for users under 18, including filters that change skin tones;
- Content policies that prevent targeting teen users with bullying or harassing content;
- Policies to give parents the ability to impose more restrictive content settings on their supervised children’s accounts;
- Restrictions that prevent teen users from friending or following age-inappropriate accounts and not recommending these accounts to teen users; and
- Settings that default teen users into private accounts on Instagram and appropriate privacy settings on Facebook.
“Children in New York and nationwide are suffering while companies like Meta reap immense profits by intentionally addicting them to their social media platforms,” James said. “We cannot allow social media companies to continue fueling the growing rates of low self-esteem, isolation, and depression among our youth. With significant new resources for our communities and comprehensive restrictions on Meta’s platforms for young people, we are taking a major step towards breaking the cycle of social media addiction. This groundbreaking plan sets a standard of reforms for all social media platforms, and I will continue to work to extend these protections across the industry.”
Meta issued their own press release about the settlement. “Over the years, we have consistently partnered with parents and experts — listening, learning, and building. That’s why we launched Teen Accounts in 2024, to bring automatic protections to teens, and more control for parents,” the company stated. “Ensuring teens have a safe and productive experience on our platforms is an absolute imperative for Meta. We want to get this right for parents and teens, and that’s why we partnered with state attorneys general to set a new industry standard.”
In addition, Meta called upon YouTube and TikTok to follow its lead. The company said it will pay $12.1 billion in settlement money over the next 10 years and YouTube and TikTok will pay the remaining $5.3 billion after they implement a one-hour daily limit, night mode and age assurance measures and agree to split the remaining settlement payment.
“While this is an important step, the fact is that teens move fluidly between dozens of apps a day,” Meta said. “All platforms should empower parents and support teens by putting the same measures in place, because we know that when teens are restricted on one app, they simply move to another.”