Attorney General Weiser announces historic settlement with Meta Platforms

Attorney General Weiser announces historic settlement with Meta Platforms

Aug. 26, 2026 (DENVER) - Social media giant Meta Platforms, Inc. will pay over $17 billion and implement sweeping child-safety reforms on Instagram and Facebook under a nationwide settlement Attorney General Phil Weiser announced today. The landmark multistate settlement with Meta is one of the largest state consumer protection settlements in history.

The agreement, subject to court approval, resolves claims by 47 states, American Samoa, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Northern Mariana Islands, that Meta 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.

Under the settlement, Colorado will receive close to $615 million over nine years, which will go directly to protecting and restoring the mental health and safety of Colorado children. Attorney General Weiser said the settlement is a monumental victory for protecting America's children and will fundamentally transform how the entire social media industry designs products for kids and teens.

"The relief we are getting in this settlement is very meaningful and well beyond what any court has ordered or is likely to order," Attorney General Weiser said. "The focus of this case was to protect our kids-stopping notifications and alerts at night and when they are in school, encouraging them to take breaks from social media, protecting them against harmful features, implementing age assurance technology, and more. Today's action is an important step forward and I welcome Meta's decision to accept responsibility and to collaborate with the multistate coalition to protect kids who deserve better."

Attorney General Weiser also acknowledged that this problem extends well beyond one company and the settlement with Meta could set the standard for the industry.

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 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.
• 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, including beauty filters and visible "like" counts, that have been linked to poor mental health outcomes in kids and teens.
• Both the implementation and effectiveness 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 previously ordered by any court. Perhaps most importantly, this settlement represents a down payment toward an industry-wide social media experience that allows kids to connect in a healthy way.

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 the states' ongoing trial in federal court in Oakland, and claims by the other settling states and territories.

The settlement also separately resolves the states' claims against Meta for its sharing of nonpublic information about Facebook users with third parties, like Cambridge Analytica, to garner support for political candidates leading up to the 2016 election. Colorado will receive an additional $11.4 million to settle those claims.

The attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the 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.

Read the settlement (PDF).

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