Social media giant Meta (META.O), the company that owns Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, agreed today to pay up to $18 billion and strengthen child safety measures on its platform, ending a trial over claims that its products harmed children’s mental health.
The company will pay the money and make the policy changes over the next decade. Changes include restricting teen access to two hours a day and blocking use from midnight to 6 a.m., unless given parental consent; restricting push notifications for teenage users from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.; and measures to prevent children from accessing age-restricted content.
Under the settlement, Meta may still use personalized recommendations and targeted advertising.
The funds will be paid out to 47 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands.
Tribes will not receive any of the funds and are not part of the settlement.
While the effects have been clear for many years, a 2021 Wall Street Journal investigation confirmed what many parents suspected: social media harms children’s mental health, driving rising levels of depression, anxiety and suicide, and the tech giants behind the most popular apps are well aware.
Native communities bear the brunt: suicide rates among Native youth ages 15 to 19 are double that of white youth.
Several tribes across Indian Country, including the Cheyenne River Sioux, Oglala Sioux, White Mountain Apache, Chickasaw Nation and more, have filed their own lawsuits against social media companies Meta, Snap, ByteDance, and Alphabet for their roles in the rising mental health crisis among Native youth across Indian Country, pointing to addictive algorithms, gambling-like features, and exploitation of reciprocity. Those litigations are ongoing.
Today’s announcement comes after a New Mexico judge earlier this month ordered Meta to pay $565 million into a ​teen mental health fund and make changes to its platforms for young users.
