Attorney General Skrmetti Announces Largest Big Tech Settlement in History

Attorney General Skrmetti Announces Largest Big Tech Settlement in History

Today, Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti announced a landmark $17.1 billion multistate settlement with Meta Platforms, Inc.-one of the largest state consumer protection settlements in history. In addition to the payment, Meta is required to implement a sweeping set of unprecedented safety features to protect children on Instagram and Facebook.

The agreement resolves claims by 47 States and D.C., Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands 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 should fundamentally transform how the technology industry designs products for kids and teens. Under the settlement, Tennessee will receive $ $751,922,691.13, and the net recovery will go directly to protecting and restoring the mental health and safety of Tennessee children via Tennessee's new Children's Digital Protection Fund.

"We took Meta to trial because Instagram was hurting kids and misleading parents. Now we're ending the trial with a settlement that imposes unprecedented protections for kids and delivers record-setting money for Tennessee's Children's Digital Protection Fund," said Attorney General Skrmetti. "The settlement addresses Meta's role in an industry-wide problem, and now the rest of Big Tech needs to catch up to Meta and implement similar protections," continued General Skrmetti. "We're going to make sure they do."

"Tennessee was proud to be a leader in this bipartisan effort to protect our kids," added Attorney General Skrmetti. "Our team led the charge on critical parts of the multistate investigation, fought hard in the courtroom, and spearheaded the negotiations for this historic agreement. I am so proud of our attorneys and other professionals who spent years making this happen. All of Tennessee should be proud of them. This is a generational win for our state and for our kids."

The agreement comes as Tennessee nears the end of a lengthy trial against Meta in front of Davidson County Chancellor Russell T. Perkins. Tennessee's trial, along with a federal trial involving several states in multidistrict litigation, spurred the negotiation that led to the settlement.

Key provisions of the settlement agreement include:

• Hard cap daily time limits and "Productive Pauses" for young users: 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 young users' access from 12:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.
• Limited school-time access for young users, 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.
• Safer, age-appropriate content controls, including stronger safeguards against bullying, content promoting eating disorders, and content related to suicide and self-harm.
• Stronger, more user-friendly parental controls.
• Limits on social comparison features for young users, including beauty filters and visible "like" counts, that have been linked to poor mental health outcomes in kids and teens.
• Both the implementation and efficacy of the features will be regularly assessed by an independent auditor and the settling states.

These are groundbreaking changes to Instagram and Facebook and more significant and comprehensive than any previously ordered by a court. Perhaps most importantly, this settlement represents a first step toward an industry-wide technology experience that allows kids to enjoy the benefits of technological progress without the exploitive harms to which they were previously subjected.

Beginning in 2021, nearly every attorney general in the country cooperated to investigate the social media industry for designing and promoting platforms to children and teens despite known harms. After a bipartisan nationwide investigation found that Meta designed Instagram's features to addict children while internally documenting the resulting mental health harms and failing to warn parents, attorneys general sued Meta individually or as part of a consolidated federal lawsuit. This settlement resolves those cases, including Tennessee's ongoing trial in state court, and claims by the other settling states and territories.

The attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Northern Mariana Islands, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming joined the settlement.

The Tennessee Attorney General's office extended thanks to Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and his team, who worked alongside Tennessee to coordinate the multistate investigation and lead the States in negotiating the settlement. Attorney General Skrmetti also thanked all the negotiating state attorneys general and their teams, including California, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Utah. He made a point to thank his predecessor, former Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery, who began the investigation.

Attorney General Skrmetti further thanked Senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal, who have been tireless advocates for a strong Kids Online Safety Act. "This settlement is the best possible solution we could get through litigation, and it delivers serious accountability with both comprehensive injunctive terms and record-setting money. But in the long run, we need federal legislation that clearly imposes a duty of care on every tech company that interacts with kids," said General Skrmetti.