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Meta agreed to settle claims brought by 29 U.S. states alleging that Facebook and Instagram were deliberately designed to addict children and teenagers, misrepresented their safety, and collected children’s data without required parental consent. The company denied the allegations while agreeing to pay at least $12.1 billion over 10 years, with total payments potentially reaching approximately $17.1 billion if other major social-media companies adopt comparable child-safety measures.
The settlement requires Meta to introduce stronger protections for young users, including age verification, expanded parental controls, daily usage limits, nighttime access restrictions, and muted notifications during school hours. The states alleged Meta prioritized user growth and advertising revenue despite evidence of harms to minors; District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb described the agreement as a significant public-health victory.
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Meta and numerous state attorneys general filed a proposed consent judgment in the Northern District of California to resolve their youth-safety, consumer-protection, and COPPA claims concerning Facebook and Instagram. Meta denied the allegations and liability; the filing incorporated the settlement's injunctive, audit, release, and monetary-relief provisions.
Earlier in August 2026, New Mexico obtained a $567 million public-nuisance ruling against Meta over alleged harms to children from Facebook and Instagram. New Mexico did not join the subsequent multistate settlement.
A bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from nearly every U.S. state filed a lawsuit alleging Meta designed Facebook and Instagram to addict minors, misrepresented their safety, and illegally collected teen users' private data.
Facebook told advertisers it could identify teenagers who felt insecure or worthless and suggested that low self-esteem could be exploited for advertising purposes.
Facebook had researched shaping users' emotions through feed manipulation by 2014, according to cited past reporting.
Reporting on Meta's youth-safety settlement described a required age-assurance framework with false-positive thresholds as low as 3%, anti-spoofing measures, independent third-party testing, demographic-parity requirements, data minimization, and deletion of age data once it has served its purpose.
Meta publicly stated that it would establish an independent social-media research foundation and share consented user data with it to support research into teen well-being. The referenced settlement does not require the foundation, according to the article's review of its terms.
Florida declined to settle the child-safety and privacy claims against Meta concerning Facebook and Instagram and will continue litigating the case.
Meta reportedly settled similar Texas allegations concerning child safety and privacy on Facebook and Instagram for approximately $1 billion. The reference says the Texas resolution occurred on the same day as the reported multistate settlement.
Meta agreed to pay an additional $459 million to resolve state privacy claims connected to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, alongside its multistate youth-addiction settlement. The combined proposed payments may total up to $18 billion and remain subject to approval by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.
The reported consent judgment makes approximately $5.3 billion of Meta's potential payment contingent on YouTube and TikTok adopting age-assurance, daily-use-limit, and Night Mode measures and each making matching payments. Meta also agreed to encourage the two platforms to implement the specified youth-safety features.
The multistate settlement requires Meta to identify users under 18, remove children under 13, enhance harmful-content reporting for teens, respond to 90% of such reports within six hours, and offer minors a non-personalized feed. Meta also agreed to limit likes and cosmetic filters for minors and retain an independent auditor with broad access.
Under the settlement, Meta agreed to measures for young users including daily time limits, nighttime access restrictions, muted school-hour notifications, enhanced parental controls, and reported age-verification mechanisms.
Meta agreed to settle claims by 29 U.S. states alleging Facebook and Instagram were designed to addict and harm young people, misrepresented safety, violated consumer-protection laws, and improperly collected children's data. The settlement is valued at up to $17.1 billion, including at least $12.1 billion over 10 years and potentially additional payments contingent on comparable measures by other social-media firms; Meta denied the allegations.
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Meta disclosed a set of new **platform safety and enforcement actions** aimed at reducing harm and abuse on its services. The company filed multiple lawsuits against alleged scam-ad operators in **Brazil, China, Vietnam** and elsewhere, describing tactics including **deepfakes/celebrity impersonation**, “celeb-bait” investment lures, and **cloaking** used to evade ad review; Meta said it also took technical steps such as disabling accounts, suspending scam-linked payment methods, and blocking associated domains, and shared information with industry partners to help them block the same actors. Separately, Meta announced new **Instagram parental-supervision alerts** that notify parents when a teen repeatedly searches for **self-harm or suicide-related terms** within a short time window (initially for supervised accounts in the **U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada**), and said it is developing similar notifications for teens’ **AI-related conversations** about self-harm. In parallel regulatory developments, EU lawmakers advanced a non-binding opinion supporting **privacy-friendly age verification** and proposing restrictions that would require **parental consent for under-16s** and bar access for children under 13, positioning these measures for potential inclusion in a future **Digital Fairness Act** focused on child protection online, targeted advertising, and addictive design patterns.
Jun 29, 2026
A Los Angeles jury found **Meta** and **YouTube** liable in a landmark lawsuit brought by a 20-year-old woman identified as `K.G.M.`, ruling that social media platforms can be addictive and that their design contributed to mental health harm she says began while using the services as a minor. Jurors awarded **$3 million** in damages, assigning **70%** of the payment to Meta and **30%** to YouTube, after concluding the companies were negligent; deliberations on punitive damages were still continuing. The case focused on features such as infinite scroll and exposure that allegedly fueled depression and suicidal thoughts, and the verdict is expected to bolster thousands of similar claims against Meta, YouTube, TikTok, and Snap. A separate New Mexico case also recently ordered Meta to pay **$375 million** over alleged failures tied to child safety and sexual exploitation risks on its platforms. In Australia, pressure on major platforms intensified as the country’s online safety regulator opened investigations into possible violations of the national ban on social media use by children under 16. eSafety Commissioner **Julie Inman Grant** said some companies may not be doing enough to comply with the law despite initial measures, naming **Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube** as platforms of concern. Together, the court ruling in the United States and the Australian probe underscore growing legal and regulatory action against social media companies over platform design, child safety, and protections for minors.
Jun 29, 2026
Meta announced new anti-scam protections across **Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp** as it faces growing scrutiny over fraud on its platforms. The company said its AI systems now analyze **text, images, and contextual signals** to detect celebrity and brand impersonation, deceptive links, domain spoofing, and other social-engineering tactics. New measures include Facebook warnings for suspicious friend requests, WhatsApp alerts for risky device-linking attempts involving QR codes or phone-number entry, and expanded Messenger scam detection that can, with user consent, review recent chats for fraud indicators. Meta also detailed privacy-focused link protection in Messenger through **Advanced Browsing Protection**, which checks shared URLs against a large malicious-site watchlist without exposing readable links to Meta. The product rollout follows a broader crackdown on industrialized scam operations, including joint action with the **Royal Thai Police**, **FBI**, **UK National Crime Agency**, and **Australian Federal Police** that led to **21 arrests** and the disabling of more than **150,000 accounts** tied to Southeast Asian scam compounds. Meta said it removed **159 million scam ads in 2025** and took down about **10.9 million Facebook and Instagram accounts** linked to criminal scam centers, while shifting from deleting individual accounts to disrupting entire networks. The push comes as researchers separately documented a large malvertising operation using **300+ paid Meta ad campaigns** to impersonate news outlets and public figures, lure victims to spoofed sites, harvest contact details, and funnel them into call-center-run investment scams across at least **25 countries**.
Jun 29, 2026