The Meta child safety settlement covering nearly every US state has been approved by a federal judge, with the social media company agreeing to pay up to $18 billion to 48 states, the District of Columbia, and three US territories over the next decade. According to the BBC, the deal was approved by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, bringing to a close a trial that had barely lasted a week in an Oakland, California courtroom.
The settlement resolves claims that Meta’s platforms, Facebook and Instagram, harmed children and violated federal and state child privacy laws. Meta has denied any wrongdoing but agreed to the payment and to a wide range of new safety features for teenage users.
How the Meta child safety settlement money is divided
Not all of the $18 billion is guaranteed. Value Add Pulse reports that roughly $12.7 billion will be paid out regardless of what happens elsewhere in the industry, spread across the next decade. The remaining $5.3 billion is conditional: it only becomes payable if platforms such as YouTube and TikTok implement comparable safety restrictions for young users. Meta confirmed the payment will be distributed in annual instalments over a 10-year period.
The District of Columbia’s share illustrates how the funds will be spread across participating jurisdictions. The DC Attorney General’s office announced that DC will receive between $90.3 million and $129.3 million from the settlement, with the final figure again depending on whether rival platforms sign up to comparable restrictions. DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb called the deal a ‘monumental public health victory’, adding: ‘The safety features Meta is required to install will fundamentally and immediately change how young people use Instagram and Facebook.’
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose state brought the case to trial, was equally direct. ‘This is a major moment to clean up an industry that has been hurting our kids,’ he said on Wednesday.
What changes Meta must now make for teen users
Beyond the financial payment, the settlement demands a substantial overhaul of how Facebook and Instagram operate for users under 18. Among the mandatory changes, a ‘night mode’ feature will block notifications between midnight and 6am and will be switched on by default, meaning teenagers will have it active unless a parent or guardian turns it off. A former Meta researcher, George Volichenko, had testified during the brief trial that a similar earlier feature called ‘quiet mode’ would have been far more widely adopted had it been set as the default. He recalled his manager telling him he ‘shouldn’t worry too much about the adoption figures being low, because the team exists partially to protect the company against the upcoming lawsuits.’
Teen accounts will also carry a default two-hour daily time limit across Instagram and Facebook combined, which can only be removed with a parent’s permission. If YouTube and TikTok agree to equivalent restrictions, that limit will drop further to one hour of total daily use. Other features include hidden likes on teen profiles, a ‘school mode’ muting notifications between 8am and 3pm on school days, prompts when a teen reaches 15 minutes of continuous use, and the option to switch off algorithm-driven feeds and video autoplay. Extreme make-up filters will no longer be accessible to young users.
Meta’s chief legal officer, CJ Mahoney, framed the changes as a template for the whole industry. ‘Our new Time Limit commitments, Night Mode features and usage limits during school hours set the right path forward for our whole industry, but this framework will only work if all our peers join us,’ he said. Bonta echoed that, describing the settlement as ‘a good blueprint’ for other companies and suggesting his office would be ‘more focused’ on pushing for industry-wide change if TikTok and YouTube decline to follow.
The case had its origins in a lawsuit filed in 2023 by 29 states. At trial, state lawyers argued that Meta knew millions of 11 and 12-year-old users were on its platforms yet ‘did little to keep them off’. They leaned heavily on millions of internal Meta documents, including research, employee emails, and chat logs reaching as far as chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. One piece of internal Instagram research stated plainly: ‘Teens have an addict’s narrative about use.’
Not every state is part of the deal. New Mexico opted out, and a federal judge there recently made a ruling against Meta, finding it to be a ‘public nuisance’ on par with air pollution and ordering combined fines of almost $1 billion.
The settlement also sits against a shifting legislative backdrop. Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick notes that the US House of Representatives passed the KIDS Act (H.R. 7757) on 29 June 2026, a consolidated bill combining several child online safety measures including KOSA and COPPA 2.0, adding federal legislative pressure to the civil actions already reshaping how platforms handle younger users. YouTube and TikTok have been contacted for comment on whether they will adopt comparable restrictions.
