Published August 26, 2026
Meta agreed on August 26, 2026 to pay up to $16.7 billion and adopt a package of new teen-safety measures to settle a social media addiction case brought by dozens of states, cutting short a trial that had opened just days earlier in federal court in Oakland, California. The states' case, filed in 2023 and co-led by California, Colorado, New Jersey, and Kentucky, accused Meta of designing Instagram and Facebook to hook young users, misrepresenting the platforms' safety to the public, and unlawfully collecting data from minors.
Under the deal, which still requires approval from U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, Meta will pay the settlement amount in installments over roughly a decade. The company also agreed to build in a daily time limit for teen accounts, block Facebook and Instagram access for minors overnight, and mute push notifications to teens during school hours. As is typical in settlements of this kind, Meta did not admit wrongdoing or liability.
This settlement is separate from the $567 million a New Mexico judge previously ordered Meta to pay into a state youth mental health fund, and from the $375 million New Mexico jury verdict earlier this year — both of which involved New Mexico's own, distinct case against the company. The states' case that just settled was a larger, multistate effort that had been building toward trial for nearly three years.
Meta's settlement doesn't resolve the litigation industry-wide. Other platforms named in related suits — including TikTok, Snap, and Google's YouTube — have not reached comparable settlements with this group of states, and further trial dates for those companies are expected later in 2026. Separately, thousands of individual and school-district lawsuits over social media design remain pending in the federal multidistrict litigation, unaffected by this states' settlement.
This settlement covers claims brought directly by state governments — it does not pay out to individual families. If your child was harmed by excessive or compulsive use of a social media platform, an individual claim is a separate legal track with its own filing deadlines. See Atumio's Social Media Addiction case page for a free eligibility review, or start your case review directly.