Meta settles lawsuit, promising NC up to $645M and changes to Instagram and Facebook apps, AG says

Tech giant Meta agreed to a $17 billion settlement to resolve a lawsuit brought by North Carolina and other states that alleged the social media company’s Facebook and Instagram apps were designed to be addictive to young people.

2026-08-26

North Carolina and 28 other states sued Meta in 2023, alleging that it was contributing to a crisis in youth mental health. Nearly every state was a part of Wednesday’s settlement.

As part of the settlement — one of the biggest in the history of Big Tech lawsuits — Meta has promised to pay North Carolina up to $646.4 million, state Attorney General Jeff Jackson said. The money across the settlement will be used to fund youth online safety initiatives, among other state priorities, Meta said. Payments are expected to be distributed in annual installments over 10 years.

The company has also promised to make changes to its Instagram and Facebook, including:

• Time limits: A default two-hour daily time limit that teens can only turn off with a parent’s permission. This limit is cumulative across Facebook and Instagram. It doesn’t include messaging or watching “longform content,” defined as video or audio that lasts at least 22 minutes without being artificially lengthened.
• Night mode: A default block from midnight to 6 a.m., restricting teens from posting or viewing key features of the apps. School mode: Notifications will be muted by default between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. from Aug. 15 through June 15. During those hours, teens won’t be able to receive push notifications, except for direct messages and alerts about their account security or safety.
• Usage prompts: Young users will receive prompts after every 15 minutes of continuous screen time on Facebook or Instagram. They’ll also receive prompts when their total daily usage hits 60 minutes and 90 minutes.
• Hidden likes: Young users won’t see the number of likes and reactions on posts — both their own and those from others — by default.
• Age Assurance: Meta says it is investing in stronger technology to verify compliance with age restrictions. The settlement requires the company to use a third party to verify or estimate the ages of users. That could include the use of user-submitted identity records or facial images. 

“The framework we’ve negotiated will empower parents to easily manage how their children access our platforms,” C.J. Mahoney, Meta’s chief legal officer, said in a statement. 

Meta previously denied the states’ allegations. As a part of the settlement, Meta didn’t admit liability, wrongdoing or legal violations. In statements Wednesday, the company said it is committed to supporting young people and has worked with parents and experts to design safety features for users under the age of 18.  

“Ensuring teens have a safe and productive experience on our platforms is an absolute imperative for Meta,” the company said in a statement. “We want to get this right for parents and teens.”

Meta executives also called on competitors to apply restrictions for young users similar to those that resulted from the settlement, saying that restrictions on one app will cause them to move to another, less-restricted app. 

“This framework will only work if all our peers join us,” Mahoney said. “Because teens move fluidly across dozens of apps, we need an industry-wide solution.”

The majority of the terms of the settlement are required to remain in place for 10 years, Meta said, but the company’s new time-limit and night-mode features will start with a five-year commitment.

Another change would disable beauty filters that could let users change the shape of their face and body. Meta already has a policy to block young users from using cosmetic surgery filters. Meta will now block teens from using extreme makeup filters.

“We want these apps to do a better job of not making young people feel miserable about themselves,” Jackson said. 

He said that change was personal for him, and likely for many other parents.

“I have a 7-year-old daughter,” Jackson said. “One day, she's going to be on social media. I don't want that to be a miserable place for her. I don't want her to see these features … and develop unrealistic beauty standards. That's plainly harmful for young people.”

About 63% of teens aged 13 to 17 use Instagram and 31% use Facebook, according to a 2025 Pew Research Center survey. TikTok and YouTube were more popular, with 68% and 92% of teens saying they used them, respectively.

In 2024, about half of teens aged 13 to 17 said social media harmed their peers, and about one in five said it had harmed their own mental health or grades, according to an earlier Pew Research Center survey. While three-quarters of teens viewed the apps as socially beneficial, nearly half said they spent too much time on them. More than 40% of teens said the time they spent on the apps kept them from getting enough sleep and harmed their productivity.

The lawsuit settled Wednesday began under then-Attorney General Josh Stein, who is now North Carolina’s governor. The state leaders, both Democrats elected to their current roles in 2024, joined together Wednesday to celebrate the settlement — noting that the states’ investigation found social media apps were intentionally feeding children violent content, or content about eating disorders.

“Meta knew better,” Stein said at the news conference Wednesday. “Instagram's internal documents showed that it knew just how harmful its apps were for children. … Meta did not see children as precious beings to be protected. They saw them as dollar signs to be exploited.”

‘Does not solve the entire issue’

Before users reach the newly required time limit, they'll get prompts every 15 minutes asking if they still want to keep scrolling. After an hour and after 90 minutes, they'll get prompts suggesting they take breaks.

Parents will be able to change the settings, including to loosen them, according to Jackson. The changes are expected to roll out in the next few months.

“A 14-year-old boy is going to hit his two-hour limit, and he's going to go to his mom and ask for more time,” Jackson said of the system the new rules are intended to create. “And now that mom and that son will be involved in a conversation and a decision that they didn't have before. And that's what progress looks like.”

An independent monitor will track compliance with the settlement.

The agreement will also establish an independent social media research foundation, Meta said. The company said it will share consented user data with the foundation to support “independent research into teen well-being and grow our collective understanding of how to best support teens online.”

The safety upgrades were a key driver of the decision to accept the settlement agreement, Jackson told WRAL News in an interview.

“We don’t want to lose another generation,” he said in an interview. “We want those upgrades, and we want them as soon as possible.”

The purpose of the elements of the changes is to protect children and empower parents, he said.

“None of these apps are going to be perfectly safe after this element,” he said.

Four states — California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey — have been in the middle of a trial that started last week.

"Meta’s been trying for years to avoid taking accountability for breaking the law and hurting our children," Jackson said in a statement before the trial began. "That stops now."

Meta previously said the attorneys general had no proof that anyone in their states was misled and characterized the lawsuits as money grabs. The lawsuits "attempt to penalize Meta for industry-wide challenges like age verification," the company said in a statement to WRAL News prior to the announcement of the settlement. "Rather than sticking to the facts or the law, the states have instead decided to chase an outlandish payout. We stand by our record of creating strong protections for teens."

Jackson told WRAL News that states had found communications among Meta executives talking about how impressionable children were and how much they struggled to self-regulate. 

“They used that information against kids and in order to boost their profit,” Jackson said. Getting children to use the apps and stay on them would generate more advertising revenue, he said.

The state is also suing TikTok-maker ByteDance. That case is ongoing. 

Jackson added that he might be able to expand his litigation efforts against other social media companies now that he has the new Meta policies to point to.

“There is no question that this settlement does not solve the entire issue with respect to social media because it does not include YouTube, it does not include Snap, it does not include TikTok,” he said. However, it is written to accommodate them. … This is an easy-way or a hard-way situation.”

Spokespeople for Snapchat parent Snap Inc., TikTok parent ByteDance and YouTube parent Google didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.

In many ways, Wednesday's settlement achieves what lawmakers in North Carolina and beyond have struggled to do. North Carolina lawmakers this year debated but didn’t pass a bill that would have banned social media accounts for children 13 and younger and required parent or guardian permission for children who were 14 or 15. Lawmakers debated whether to restrict the bill to only addictive social media apps and who to define that. They also debated age-verification methods, with a representative from Meta recommending to them that age verification be done at the app-store level, not the app-level. The bill would have fined social media companies up to $50,000 for each time a child set up an account against the bill's provisions, and families of those children could have sued the companies for up to $10,000.

In 2025, the state's Child Fatality Task Force recommended the state pass laws to curb the addictive nature of social media and study the impact of artificial intelligence on young people, citing concerns for young people's mental health.

School board litigation

Joining Stein and Jackson Wednesday was State Superintendent of Public Instruction Mo Green, who said social media has done real damage to young people. 

Green, a Democrat, praised the Republican-led state legislature for a new law banning cell phones in schools and said he also hopes the legislature uses some of his new money to fund more school counselors and similar support staff.

“Every child in North Carolina, in every county, in whatever school they currently attend or will attend, should have access to mental health support they need to be successful in the classroom and to be prepared for their next phase of life,” Green said.

North Carolina school boards have also pursued cases against Meta, Snap, ByteDance and Google over what the schools say are addictive apps that are leading to distractions in school and a youth mental health crisis that schools are bearing the brunt of. The companies have fought those cases and denied those allegations.

Wednesday's settlement doesn't affect those school cases, Jackson said. They can proceed with their own claims.

But Jackson will make some school-based recommendations for how North Carolina can spend the money.

Under state law, he said, the North Carolina General Assembly would have full control over how the money is spent. Jackson plans to detail his recommendations at a later date, but he told WRAL that he plans to recommend afterschool programs, summer school programs and support professionals at schools, such as counselors.