By Katherine Dailey, Michigan Advance
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced on Wednesday that she, along with the attorneys general of 50 other states and territories, had reached a settlement agreement with Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, over concerns about the addictive nature of those platforms, especially for children.
The settlement, which Nessel’s office called a “monumental victory,” totals around $17 billion, with Michigan to receive at least $171 million under the agreement.
It addresses allegations that Meta designed its social media apps, specifically Instagram, with addictive features, that it knowingly exposed young users to serious mental harms and intentionally misled the public about the safety of its platforms.
“For too many years, social media platforms have traded our children’s mental health for engagement on their apps,” Nessel said in a press release. “This historic settlement holds Meta accountable and puts critical, first-of-its-kind safeguards in place to protect Michigan kids, including daily screen breaks, nighttime access blocks, and the removal of harmful features like public like counts.”
Nessel, along with 33 other state attorneys general, initially sued Meta in October 2023 in a lawsuit that alleged Meta had received millions of complaints about underage users on Instagram, but never disclosed that fact or made any serious effort to close those accounts.
The settlement puts in place a number of new limits on Meta’s social media apps for children:
• Hard caps on daily time limits and “Productive Pauses” for children: for its two platforms, Instagram and Facebook, a combined two-hour daily time limit with mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use and again at 60 and 90 minutes to interrupt endless scrolling. These limits will remain in effect for five years. If Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube adopt comparable terms, the daily limit on each platform will drop to 60 minutes for 10 years.
• “Nighttime blocks” restricting children’s access from midnight to 6 a.m.
• Limited school-time access for children, eliminating push notifications on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. during the school year.
• Robust age assurance measures to more effectively verify the age of young users.
• Safer, age-appropriate content controls, including stronger safeguards against bullying, content that promotes eating disorders, and content related to suicide and self-harm.
• Stronger, more user-friendly parental controls.
• Limits on social comparison features, including beauty filters and visible “like” counts, that have been linked to poor mental health outcomes in children and teens.
Those changes — both their implementation and how well they are actually working — will be “regularly assessed” by the states in the settlement and an independent auditor.
The settlement also resolves the states’ claims against Meta over its sharing of nonpublic Facebook user information with third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, before the 2016 election, according to Nessel’s office.
“Now, the responsibility to protect our youth cannot end here,” Nessel said. “It is my hope that this is a turning point for the entire social media industry to prioritize the safety and well-being of children over their bottom line.”
She noted that the money from the settlement will act as a “down payment toward an industry-wide social media experience that allows kids to connect in a healthy way.”
Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jon King for questions: info@michiganadvance.com.
