BOISE — Attorney General Raúl Labrador announced Idaho will be receiving as much as $127.7 million from Meta following an up to $17.1 billion multi-state settlement requiring social media platforms under the parent company to implement changes addressing claims they harmed children and used knowingly addictive features.
The agreement — which will result in Idaho receiving between $89.2 million and $127.7 million and Meta paying between $12.1 billion and $17.1 billion — arrived in the middle of a trial that began on Aug. 18 in federal court.
The maximum settlement amount being awarded is contingent on other social media platforms agreeing to similar terms to implement youth protections, a spokesperson for the Idaho Attorney General’s office said in an emailed statement.
Whatever portion of the Meta settlement Idaho receives will go to the state’s Consumer Protection Fund and then transferred to the State General Fund, the spokesperson added.
The settlement agreement resolves claims from 47 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands that Instagram and Facebook were knowingly subjecting young users to mental harms and had purposefully misled the public about the platforms’ safety, a news release from Labrador’s office said.
“Protecting children in Idaho is one of the most critical responsibilities of my office,” Labrador said in the release. “Intentionally engineering any product to addict children is unconscionable. Meta’s design was a cynical attempt to create a lifetime user, regardless of the psychological damage and harm our children were exposed to. When this trial began, I said we would hold Meta accountable and today I’ve kept that promise.”
The litigation into what is the world’s largest social media company began in 2021 when attorneys general initiated a cooperative investigation into the broader social media industry for designing and promoting platforms with known harms to children and teens.
The nationwide investigation specifically found Meta had designed Instagram with “features addictive to children” while at the same time internally documenting “resulting mental health harms and failing to warn parents,” the release said.
The investigation led Labrador to join the resulting lawsuit with 32 other attorneys general in October 2023, alleging Meta’s practices with Facebook and Instagram were in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protections Act by collecting data from children without parental consent and were broadly designed to “foster compulsive use.”
In addition to paying the respective parties to the suit, Meta has agreed to implement a range of safety features to protect children on Instagram and Facebook:
- For the next five years, children on the platforms will see daily limits of two hours and mandatory “productive pauses” after 15 minutes of continuous use and at intervals of 60 and 90 minutes to interrupt endless scrolling. If Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube were to implement similar limits, the daily limit on Instagram and Facebook will drop to 60 minutes over 10 years.
- New “nighttime blocks” will restrict a child’s access from midnight to 6 a.m. Notifications will also be silenced from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.
- Limits on school-time access for children by eliminating push notifications on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. during the school year.
- More robust parental controls and age verification measures for young users. Age-appropriate content controls will guard against bullying and content relating to eating disorders and suicide or self-harm.
- Limits on social comparison features, including beauty filters and visible “like” counts.
The implementation and effectiveness of these changes will assessed by an independent auditor and the settling states.
Labrador’s office described the settlement as among the largest consumer protection settlements for the state outside of the 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. The Millennium Fund, which receives cash receipts for this settlement, is projected to continue to receive about $25 million per year, according to state budget documents.
As for the new arrangement with Meta, it arrives several months after Idaho lawmakers ordered social media companies to make changes to their platforms.
Seeking to address similar issues to the concerns raised in the multi-state suit, the Idaho Legislature passed a bipartisan Stop Harms from Addictive Social Media Act ordering social media platforms to remove addictive qualities for children-owned accounts and requiring parental consent to create accounts for those ages 16 years old and under, among other changes.
Rep. Jaron Crane, R-Nampa, who drafted the legislation, issued a statement Wednesday hailing the decision as a victory for parents and children in the state.
“Requiring stronger parental controls, age authentication, limits on endless scrolling, restrictions during school hours, and nighttime protections are commonsense steps that empower moms and dads rather than replacing them,” Crane stated.
Crane said Idaho’s regulatory reforms were the first of their kind in the nation and have been used as a model by other states in crafting their own legislation.
Crane’s legislation went beyond Meta, however, applying to platforms generating at least $1 billion in advertising revenue in a single year, as was previously reported by the Idaho Press.
Crane emphasized this on Wednesday, stating the the change cannot end with Meta as other platforms used by children, including Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube, were in need of similar protections.
“As Idahoans, we should defend innovation and free enterprise while never surrendering one of our most fundamental principles: parents have the primary responsibility and authority to raise and protect their children,” Crane stated.