Social media giant Meta has agreed to a significant settlement with US states and territories to resolve claims that Facebook and Instagram harmed children.
If approved by a California judge, Meta will pay a maximum of $18bn (£13.3bn) to 48 states, plus the District of Columbia and three US territories, marking the company's largest payment over child safety litigation to date.
Meta will also implement a host of changes to the platforms aimed at better protecting children online, which the states had demanded, including default daily time limits and night-time blocks.
"This is a major moment to clean up an industry that has been hurting our kids", California Attorney General Rob Bonta said.
Meta has denied any wrongdoing as part of the settlement and said Wednesday that the payment it has agreed to "will be distributed in annual instalments over a 10-year period."
While the settlement includes almost the entire US, the initial lawsuit was filed in 2023 by 29 states accusing the company of numerous violations of federal and state child privacy laws.
One of the states that is not part of the settlement is New Mexico. Last month, a federal judge there made an historic ruling against Meta, finding it to be a "public nuisance" on par with air pollution and ordering it to pay combined fines of almost $1bn.
As a jury trial kicked off last week in an Oakland, California federal courthouse, state lawyers argued the tech company knew that millions of 11 and 12 year-old users were on Instagram and Facebook over the years, yet "did little to keep them off" the platforms.
Although the trial had only gone on for five days, state lawyers relied heavily on information found in millions of internal Meta documents provided in the case. They included internal research, employee emails, and chat logs that went all the way up to chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.
One piece of internal research on Instagram stated: "Teens have an addict's narrative about use." Still, the states argued, Meta targeted young users.
"The trial did not go well for Meta", Bonta said on Wednesday.
Meta maintained throughout the brief trial that it had worked extensively over the years to make its platforms safer for its youngest users, pouring resources into testing and research, and building new features.
"We're always working on teen safety", head of Instagram Adam Mosseri said during just an hour of court testimony on Tuesday.
The case was settled and court adjourned before he could reappear before a jury.
Prior to Mosseri's testimony, a former researcher at Meta, George Volichenko, appeared and with lawyers went over various internal communications he had been a part of regarding Meta's work on safety.
