Meta has just agreed to pay a hefty $17 billion to settle a landmark social media addiction lawsuit in the state of California, alongside a few other states. As part of the lawsuit, attorneys general representing California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey accused the company of making its social media platforms (Facebook and Instagram) addictive by design and harming kids.
A huge shift
The news of the settlement comes merely a day after Instagram chief Adam Mosseri testified in court that the company didn’t come out clear on the low adoption of its Take a Break feature, which encourages users to stop their social media activity. “I’m not trying to encourage my team to hide anything,” he further added, as per CNBC.
In February, when asked about a person using Instagram for 16 hours each day in a California court, Mosseri said it was “problematic use,” and not addiction. As part of the settlement, Meta agrees to have violated federal child privacy and consumer protection laws, and the sum of $17 billion is being paid as a penalty.
In the court filing, Meta has also promised that it will enforce “daily limits and blocks on nighttime use for teenage users.” Moroever, the company also plans to offer “enhanced age assurance measures to prevent children from accessing the platform, or age-restricted content available on the platform.”
What comes next?
As part of the settlement, the company is also asked to develop tools that will let guardians and parents keep a tighter vigilance on the social media activities of kids and keep them safe online. More importantly, Meta has also agreed to ban features that take a toll on the mental health of teenagers.
Following is the full list of protections that the state of California is now seeking from Meta:
- A default daily time limit of two hours for users under 18 that can only be lifted by a parent. If other social media platforms agree to similar terms, the daily time limit will drop to one hour.
- A default nighttime block between midnight and 6am for users under 18 that can only be lifted by a parent. If other social media platforms agree to similar terms, the nighttime block will expand to cover 10pm to 7am.
- Default blocks on notifications to users under 18 from 10pm to 7am and during the school day (8am to 3pm from August 15 to June 15.)
- An enhanced mechanism for teens to report potentially harmful content and a requirement that Meta respond to 90% of those reports within six hours.
- A ban on displaying numbers of likes or reactions to users under 18.
- A ban on cosmetic procedure image filters for users under 18.
- An option for users under 18 to have a non-personalized feed, meaning a feed that doesn’t use an algorithm to target them with content aimed to keep them endlessly scrolling.
- A commitment from Meta to maintain, review, and improve existing teen content safety measures.
- Meta has agreed to maintain, review, and improve existing teen content safety measures and will create enhanced parent supervision tools.
- Meta will institute robust age assurance measures to detect users under 18, as well as measures to identify and remove kids under 13 from their platforms.
- Meta will bring on an independent auditor with expansive access to information and resources, regular reporting, and the right to communicate concerns to the Attorneys General.
- Finally, Meta will be subject to an injunction prohibiting it from making further false, misleading, or deceptive statements around its safety features.
“Today, we have secured a settlement with Meta that will make social media less dangerous for our kids and make a world of a difference for children and their families,” said California Attorney General, Rob Bonta, in an official statement. This won’t be the end of troubles for Meta, as the company is also facing lawsuits from school districts that touch on the impact of addictive social media usage.
Related coverage:
- Instagram will stop bombarding teens with the same kind of obsessively unhealthy content
- New report says Meta pays influencers to fight social media bans for teens accounts worldwide
- Yet another study finds too many kids are seeing harmful content on social media
- Phones aren’t always bad for kids. Social media does the real harm
