With Meta’s recent $17.1 billion legal settlement over allegations that its social media platforms harmed young people’s mental health, in the coming years 51 states and territories will receive payouts ranging from millions to more than $2 billion for youth online safety initiatives. That money, along with changes to its platforms that Meta agreed to make, represents an important recognition that the mental health crisis facing young people is profoundly damaging to their futures and to our country as a whole.
But equally important is what happens after states begin receiving their funds. Will the money go to well-intended but siloed programs that happen to come across decision-makers’ radars? Or will states use this moment to take a more strategic and impactful approach: publicly measuring whether the funds — and the actions taken with them — actually lead to adolescents becoming healthier, safer and more hopeful?
History offers a cautionary tale. The 1998 tobacco settlement delivered more than $200 billion to states to address the damage caused by cigarettes. But in the end, much of the funding was diverted to unrelated purposes or spread across disconnected smoking-prevention efforts. While smoking rates declined, they ultimately plateaued. In short, states spent the money and checked the boxes, but the underlying problem didn’t continue to get better.
States must not repeat that mistake with teen mental health. Instead, they should begin by establishing clear outcomes for programs supported by the new settlement: the measurable, real-world changes they want to see in young people’s mental health. A first step is looking at the baseline data: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2023 a shocking 40 percent of high school students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness — an enormous jump from the 30 percent who reported these feelings in 2013. No society can succeed when its future leaders are experiencing this level of anxiety and despair.
Next, states should set a goal that will serve as their North Star. Imagine what could happen if every state receiving settlement funds set a specific goal to reduce the percentage of young people in their communities who persistently feel hopeless or sad — by perhaps 3 percent in two years, 5 percent in three years, and so on.
This North Star goal only works if it serves as a mechanism for accountability. Any parent, student, educator, reporter, legislator or taxpayer should be able to understand what the goal is and whether the state is making progress toward it. For this to happen, states shouldn’t bury their work and data in agency reports; they should provide transparent, accessible dashboards that act as a shared scorecard.
Done well, these dashboards would give everyone in a state a common set of facts around which to debate priorities, direct resources, identify gaps and hold institutions accountable. Importantly, a dashboard on youth mental health would make it harder for leaders to declare victory based on dollars spent, grants awarded or new programs announced when the lives of young people are not improving.
That distinction matters. For too long, too many public and philanthropic efforts have been judged by inputs — how much money was appropriated — or outputs — how many people attended a workshop, downloaded an app or received a referral. Those measures may be useful, but they don’t tell us what really matters: in this case, more young people who are able to get help when they need it, are experiencing less despair, are building stronger relationships and are moving through adolescence with a realistic sense of possibility.
If states create durable systems for measuring youth mental health, they will be better equipped to make future budget decisions, guide philanthropy, coordinate schools and providers, and respond early when warning signs emerge. They will also be able to see which approaches are working and which, despite good intentions, are not.
The Meta settlement is an opportunity for accountability after harm. It can also become a turning point in how states respond to the youth mental health crisis. Before allocating the money, they should make a public commitment to the young people it is meant to serve: We will not judge success by how quickly we spend these funds or how many programs we create. We will judge it by whether your lives get better.
Andrew Wolk is the founder of the Finding Common Purpose Foundation, a nonpartisan funder collaborative that supports initiatives to set specific, transparent and measurable goals to improve outcomes for communities. He is the author of Common Purpose: Building a Movement to Renew the American Promise.
Governing‘s opinion columns reflect the views of their authors and not necessarily those of Governing‘s editors or management.
