Meta's child addiction litigation

Meta has agreed to pay between $12.1 billion and $17.1 billion to settle a 47-state lawsuit alleging its platforms were designed to be addictive to children, with settlement terms requiring a two-hour daily limit, a midnight-to-6am blackout, mandatory productive pauses, and an age assurance system subject to independent testing with specific false-positive-rate caps for teen users. Meta also settled a separate case with Texas. At the same time, Meta faces additional litigation: a Los Angeles jury returned a $6 million verdict against it in March 2026 over negligent platform design, and four states began an Oakland trial in mid-August 2026 seeking up to $1.4 trillion in penalties, a sum described as roughly equal to Meta's entire market capitalization, over claims its features were engineered to addict minors.