Getting your
Trinity Audioplayer ready...California and dozens of other states won sweeping new restrictions on how Facebook and Instagram treat children Wednesday, including daily time limits, overnight lockouts and stronger parental controls, along with as much as $17 billion from Meta.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers approved the agreement in Oakland, abruptly ending a closely watched trial over allegations that Meta deliberately hooked children on its platforms and concealed the resulting harm.
“This is transformative,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Wednesday. “This is a major step forward in the ongoing quest and journey to make sure that our children are safe everywhere, including online.”
Meta denied the lawsuit’s allegations and admitted no wrongdoing. In a statement Wednesday, the company called on its rivals to adopt similar protections, saying, “We cannot do it alone.”
Meta will pay $12 billion over 10 years, with that amount rising to $17 billion if other major social media companies agree to similar protections. California would receive $1.5 billion to $2.2 billion to address harms to children from social media, Bonta said.
Bonta called the payment “secondary” to the changes Meta agreed to make, which he described as “the heart and core of this settlement.”
The deal covers 52 jurisdictions, including states, territories and the District of Columbia. Some joined the agreement despite not participating in the lawsuit that went to trial in Oakland.
Under the agreement, children under 18 will face a combined two-hour daily limit on Facebook and Instagram, along with an overnight blackout from midnight to 6 a.m. Parents could lift either restriction. If other social media platforms agree to similar changes, the daily limit would drop to one hour and the overnight block would expand from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.
Messaging is exempt from the restrictions, and time spent watching long-form videos would not count against the daily limit.
Despite Bonta’s assertion Wednesday that the states made no compromises, the agreement drops a key demand that children be barred from using Facebook and Instagram at school. They may continue using the platforms during school hours, but Meta cannot send notifications then except for messages or account and platform issues.
Meta also agreed to bar minors from using features that alter photos to replicate cosmetic surgery. Children will be able to choose a nonpersonalized feed, preventing Meta’s algorithms from targeting them with content in a manner the lawsuit argued encourages endless scrolling. The agreement also prohibits showing children the number of likes or reactions a post receives.
The company must implement age-verification measures to determine whether users are under 18 and subject to the restrictions, or under 13 and already barred from Meta’s platforms.
An independent auditor will monitor Meta’s compliance with the agreement.
Standing outside the federal courthouse in Oakland on Wednesday morning, Victoria Hinks of San Rafael smiled and expressed relief.
Hinks’ daughter, Alexandra, died by suicide in 2024 after years of heavy social media use, often consuming Instagram content focused on anorexia and self-harm, Hinks said. The former Redwood High School student, who often went by the nickname “Owl,” would sometimes steal back her phone after her parents took it away.
“I feel like there’s finally some justice,” Hinks said.
She called the $17 billion figure “meaningful” and praised the reforms Meta agreed to make.
“The ultimate goal is to make changes,” Hinks said. “We’re not trying to get rid of social media — there’s some good it could do.”
But she would have liked to hear an apology from Meta.
“Mark Zuckerberg still has to answer for what his company did,” she said.
How effectively the settlement terms will prevent harms to children will depend on “whether Meta can accurately identify teenage users, whether kids can evade the restrictions through secondary accounts, and how much activity migrates into exempt categories like messaging and long-form video,” said Stanford University law school professor Nora Freeman Engstrom.
Stavros Gadinis, professor at UC Berkeley’s law school and facility director of the school’s Center for Law and Business, said Meta may have agreed to the deal to avoid the embarrassment of putting CEO Mark Zuckerberg on the witness stand. The company also sought to prevent more damaging evidence from emerging during the trial that could be used by plaintiffs in thousands of similar lawsuits or by shareholders challenging how executives’ decisions affected Meta’s stock price, Gadinis said.
In settling, Meta reversed its previously combative approach to lawsuits alleging its products harmed children, Gadinis said. Gadinis noted that the company fought a similar case in New Mexico until a jury verdict and judge’s ruling hit it with a nearly $1 billion penalty.
“Meta is kind of embracing the reforms,” Gadinis said. “It wants to appear as the industry leader.”
Whether Meta’s social media rivals Snap, YouTube and TikTok follow suit remains unclear. None responded Wednesday to questions about potential changes to their platforms.
“I’m hopeful that they’re seeing the writing on the wall and will start doing the right thing,” said Cheryl Westmont of Burlingame, a board member at New York-based Mothers Against Media Addiction. “They know they have a problem. They’re putting profits over kids.”
Kris Perry, executive director of the New York think tank Children and Screens, noted that Meta’s rivals have resisted calls for years to make their platforms safer for children. If they do not respond to Meta’s agreement with changes of their own, “children might just migrate” to those platforms, Perry said.
Hinks planned to visit her daughter’s grave after returning home to San Rafael and deliver news of what she sees as a victory over Meta. Alexandra rests beneath a green patch of earth not far behind her family’s house, a place Hinks and her husband, Paul, still visit every day.
“I’m just going to go up there,” she said, “and I’m going to go to her beautiful grave and tell her, ‘We did it.'”