For years, Meta built Instagram and Facebook to keep kids scrolling and knew what that was doing to their mental health, while telling parents and the public something different. Today, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield announced that is changing, with a landmark settlement that requires Meta to rebuild core parts of Instagram and Facebook around the safety of young users.
“Kids are not a business model. For too long, Meta chose profit over the wellbeing of the young people using its platforms, and Oregon families paid the price,” said Attorney General Rayfield. “This settlement changes that – not just with a record payment, but with real, independently verified changes to how these platforms work for kids.”
- A combined two-hour daily time limit across Instagram and Facebook for kids, with mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use and again at 60 and 90 minutes – in place for five years. If Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube adopt similar limits, the cap on each platform drops to 60 minutes for 10 years.
- “Nighttime blocks” cutting off kids’ access from midnight to 6 a.m.
- No push notifications for kids on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. during the school year.
- Stronger, more effective age verification.
- Safer, age-appropriate content controls, including stronger safeguards against bullying and content promoting eating disorders, suicide, and self-harm.
- More user-friendly parental controls.
- Limits on features like beauty filters and visible “like” counts, which have been linked to poor mental health outcomes in kids and teens.
An independent auditor, along with the settling states, will regularly check both that Meta actually puts these changes in place and that they’re working as intended.
The settlement also resolves claims that Meta unlawfully shared Facebook users’ nonpublic information with third parties, including the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, in the lead-up to the 2016 election.
These are groundbreaking changes to Instagram and Facebook and more significant and comprehensive than previously ordered by any court. And perhaps most importantly, this settlement represents a down payment toward an industry-wide social media experience that allows kids to connect in a healthy way.
Financially, the agreement is one of the largest state consumer protection settlements in U.S. history, outside the Big Tobacco settlements of the 1990s. States are guaranteed a combined $17.1 billion, with Oregon’s share totaling more than $125 million over 10 years. A separate contingency payment of up to $5.7 billion becomes available if the states reach similar resolutions with other social media companies, which would bring Oregon an additional $54 million. Oregon will also receive more than $10.1 million from the related settlement of the Cambridge Analytica claims.
