Lori Schott called Wednesday “a good day” after Meta agreed to pay $18 billion in a Meta $18 billion settlement over claims that Facebook and Instagram harmed children. The deal gives the company 10 years to pay and puts new default limits on how young people use its platforms.
The 29 US states that brought the lawsuit had sought $200 billion, so the payout lands far below the opening demand. Meta stock jumped 5% after the announcement and later settled at a gain of just over 1.25%.
Meta and the youth limits
Meta agreed to a two-hour daily cap for young people, along with restricted access during the night and the school day. Likes will not appear automatically for young users, and safety and parental supervision measures will be the default rather than opt-in extras.
That is the part families will notice first. The rules are built into the product by default, which means teens should see fewer prompts to spend long stretches inside Facebook and Instagram without a parent changing settings first.
Arturo Béjar on Facebook and Instagram
In the first week of the trial in California, jurors heard from former Meta safety engineer Arturo Béjar, who said his teenage daughter received unwanted sexual advances, crude misogynistic insults and photos of male genitalia on Instagram. He said his survey found 51% of teen users had had bad or harmful experiences on Instagram within the previous seven days, and that content was taken down only 0.02% of the time.
On Thursday, Béjar said, “They knew that harm to kids was happening, but they were telling the world it wasn’t.” He also said he had reported his findings to Mark Zuckerberg directly and got no reply.
YouTube and TikTok condition
Nearly a third of the settlement sum depends on YouTube and TikTok agreeing to the same restrictions, which makes part of the payment conditional rather than fixed. Meta did not admit liability, so the company avoided a court ruling that could have imposed a more direct finding against it.
Meta agreed to the restrictions, but teenagers will likely look for ways around them once they are live. How effectively Meta enforces the new defaults across Facebook and Instagram is the question the settlement leaves hanging.
