Labrador Letter – Holding Meta Accountable

Dear Friends,

For years Meta assured parents that Instagram was safe for their children while its own internal records documented what the platform was doing to them. This week the company agreed to pay $17.1 billion and to rebuild how Facebook and Instagram work for children. Idaho will receive between $89.2 million and $127.7 million of that, a share of one of the largest state consumer protection settlements on record outside the Big Tobacco cases of the 1990s.

Attorneys general around the country spent years investigating how social media companies were designing and promoting their platforms to children and teens despite the harms those companies knew about. That investigation found that Meta designed Instagram's features to addict children while internally documenting the mental health damage that followed and failing to warn parents. Fifty-five attorneys general sued Meta, individually or as part of a consolidated federal lawsuit, and 47 states joined the settlement announced this week, along with the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands.

Parents are the first line of defense for children in Idaho, and that role depends on accurate information. A mother deciding whether her thirteen-year-old can have an Instagram account is relying on what the company says the product does. When a company misrepresents that, the parent loses the ability to make the decision at all. Consumer protection law exists for exactly this reason. The requirement is that a company tell the truth about what it is selling, and Meta purposefully misled the public about the safety of its platforms. Enforcing that requirement is not the government substituting its judgment for a parent's. It is the government making sure the parent has what she needs to exercise her own.

Meta fought these claims for years, and trial began on August 18 in federal court and was expected to last several weeks. The company settled in the second week, and the agreement has now been approved by all sides.

The money is significant, but the more important win here is the changes that will be made going forward. Meta must impose a combined two-hour daily limit across Instagram and Facebook for children, with mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use and again at 60 and 90 minutes to interrupt endless scrolling. Access is blocked from midnight to 6 a.m., and push notifications are eliminated on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. during the school year. The company must adopt robust age assurance measures, stronger safeguards against bullying and against content promoting eating disorders, suicide, and self-harm, and more usable parental controls. It must also limit the social comparison features linked to poor mental health outcomes in kids and teens, including beauty filters and visible like counts. An independent auditor and the settling states will regularly assess both whether Meta implements these changes and whether they work.

This settlement cannot undo the harm already done to children who spent their adolescence on these platforms. Meta remains a company built to maximize engagement, and teenagers remain resourceful enough to work around most restrictions placed in front of them. What we secured is a set of basic tools for Idaho parents and a public record of what one of the largest companies in the world knew while it told families something different.

The same design choices are at work on other platforms, aimed at the same developing minds, and my office will approach those companies with the same seriousness we brought to this one. Protecting children in Idaho and putting parents in the driver seat is among the most important responsibilities this office carries.

Best regards,