Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, CONSUMER PROTECTION NEWS: Meta, State AGs reach social media lawsuit settlement, (Aug 26, 2026)

By Jeff Williams, TR Daily

The proposed settlement includes a monetary payment of up to $17 billion to the states over ten years.

Meta Platforms, Inc., has reached an agreement with a bipartisan group of attorneys general (AGs) from nearly every U.S. state and territory and the District of Columbia to pay as much as $17.1 billion and make numerous changes to its Facebook and Instagram social media platforms to settle the AGs’ lawsuit alleging mental and physical harms to children, as well as violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (In re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 3047 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 26, 2026)).

If approved by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the agreement would settle a case pending there, where the trial is currently under way.

The agreement states that Meta denies the allegations.

The agreement “institutes real change, real transparency, real protections for children and teens across the country that will be implemented over the coming months,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D.) said today during a press conference, adding that the “significant changes” Meta has agreed to will “reduce the risk of harm that Instagram and Facebook pose to teen users” using a “whole suit of protections to reduce the harm that we know children were suffering from over the last number of years.”

AG Bonta said that it is “telling” that the settlement comes as Instagram President Adam Mosseri is testifying during the trial in State of California, et al. v. Meta Platforms, Inc., et al., case 23-05448, and ahead of Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg’s expected testimony. Mr. Bonta said that “[i]nstead of getting tied up in years of trials and appeals, we have secured the changes we were after.”

In a press release, Meta said, “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.”

Meta said in the release that the settlement requires it to pay about 70% of the total compensation to states over 10 years, with the remaining 30% payable if YouTube and TikTok agree to pay a similar amount and also implement one-hour daily usage limits and other conditions.

In the release, Meta Chief Legal Officer C.J. Mahoney said that the framework in the agreement “will empower parents to easily manage how their children access our platforms” and urged other social media platforms to adopt a similar framework.

In addition to the monetary compensation, the slate of changes called for by the settlement include Meta’s implementation of a default two-hour daily time limit for users under 18 that can only be lifted by a parent and that could drop to one hour per day if other social media platforms agree to similar terms. Other commitments include blocking users under 18 from accessing the platforms between midnight and 6 a.m., which could expand to the hours from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. if other platforms agree to similar terms. Meta also agreed to institute age assurance measures, provide additional parental supervision tools, and use an independent auditor to oversee Meta’s compliance with the agreement.

“My hope and my belief is that we will see commitments across the industry” to similar practices, Mr. Bonta said.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said, “Time and time again, we have heard how Meta, one of the world’s biggest companies, consistently chooses profits and growth over people and safety. This needs to stop. While this is a landmark settlement, Congress still needs to step up and regulate Big Tech. This is one of the few issues where Congress universally agrees on a bipartisan basis that we should act, and there are a number of bipartisan bills ready for floor consideration by both the House and the Senate. I stand ready to work with my colleagues to hold Big Tech accountable.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.), ranking member of the Judiciary Committee’s privacy, technology, and the law subcommittee, called the “landmark settlement” a “critical step toward protecting children online.”

“We need rules of the road to hold tech companies accountable and protect kids,” she said in a press release. “Congress needs to pass strong kids’ safety rules and make these platforms responsible for the products they build so they stop blaming parents. It’s not the parents. It’s the products.”

Kate Ruane, director of the Center for Democracy & Technology's Free Expression Project, said in a press release that while “giving kids and their parents more choices and control is beneficial,” the group has concerns about the “potential for significant risks to everyone’s privacy and free expression rights online, especially in the ways this settlement will subject all users to invasive age assurance and limit all kids’ access to content and services regardless of their individual needs.”

Florida did not join the Meta settlement. Attorney General James Uthmeier (R.) said today in a statement on X: “The payouts are peanuts compared to the profound harms Meta’s profit-driven addictive features inflicted on kids, and a slap on the wrist for a trillion-dollar corp that’ll pay more to lawyers than to the states. We’ll see them at trial,” he said.

Companies: Meta Platforms, Inc.

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