Louisiana has been included as part of an historic $12.19 billion multistate settlement with Meta Platforms, Inc.
The announcement follows recent lawsuits filed by Attorney General Murrill against popular children’s platforms Roblox and TikTok for deceptively advertising themselves as safe for kids.
The Meta settlement is the largest state consumer protection settlement in history outside the Big Tobacco settlements of the 1990s. In addition to the payment, Meta must implement a sweeping set of safety features designed to protect children on Instagram and Facebook.
The agreement resolves claims by 47 other States that the company designed Instagram with addictive features, knowingly exposed young users to serious mental harms, and intentionally misled the public about the safety of its platforms, among other things.
This settlement is a monumental victory for the protection of America’s children and will fundamentally transform how the entire social media industry designs products for kids and teens.
Under the settlement, Louisiana will receive over $180 million ($180,878,138) across nine years. Louisiana’s involvement was handled “in-house,” with no outside counsel fees.
The Meta settlement will grow to $17.1 billion (and an additional $67 million for Louisiana) if Core Industry Members Snap, TikTok, and YouTube enter deals with similar injunctive and monetary relief.
“This settlement is an earthquake when it comes to child safety reforms and Big Tech accountability. This isn’t a payoff—it’s meaningful reform that gives Louisiana the tools we need to focus on the safety of our children in the digital world,” said Attorney General Liz Murrill.
The settlement requires Meta to implement a series of safety features on Instagram and Facebook, including:
- Hard cap daily time limits and “Productive Pauses” for children: for its two platforms, Instagram and Facebook, a combined two-hour daily time limit with mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use and again at 60 and 90 minutes to interrupt endless scrolling. These limits remain in effect for five years. If Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube adopt comparable terms, the daily limit on each platform will drop to 60 minutes for 10 years.
- “Nighttime blocks” restricting children’s access from 12:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.
- Limited school-time access for children, eliminating push notifications on weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. during the school year.
- Robust age assurance measures to more effectively verify the age of young users.
- Stronger, more user-friendly parental controls.
- Both the implementation and efficacy of the features will be regularly assessed by an independent auditor and the settling states.
Information provided by the Office of Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill and edited for publication on the Times of Houma/Thibodaux.
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