Meta’s decision to agree to an $18 billion (£13.3 billion) settlement on Wednesday to resolve claims that Facebook and Instagram harmed children came as a surprise, bringing a major legal battle involving 29 US states to an unexpected end.
The case was expected to produce weeks of courtroom drama as nearly two-thirds of US states took on one of the world’s biggest technology companies, reports BBC.
Technically, the trial focused on children’s online privacy and centred on the US Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a law that is nearly 30 years old and predates today’s major social media platforms.
The case examined Meta’s historical collection and use of data belonging to children under 13 over several years.
But the legal action also represented a wider challenge to Meta’s record on online safety. The company, along with other social media platforms, has faced growing scrutiny worldwide over the impact of its services on children.
The year 2026 is increasingly emerging as a period of reckoning for the social media industry, with governments, parents and regulators demanding stronger safeguards for young users.
Meta has spent months and significant sums defending its commitment to protecting children on its platforms through multiple lawsuits.
The company has also promoted its safety measures. At presentations at Meta’s London headquarters, senior executives have shown journalists the various tools introduced over the years to provide children with greater protection across its apps.
However, parents of young people who have suffered harm on social media have offered a very different perspective. Some parents have also said they feel overwhelmed by the number of safety controls that require their supervision. Meta had more than 60 such tools on Instagram alone at the last count.
A short but difficult trial for Meta
The trial lasted only five days and ended before Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was called to testify.
Despite its brevity, the proceedings created significant difficulties for the company.
Arturo Bejar, a former Instagram employee who became a whistleblower, told the court that he had previously warned Meta executives about harmful content and experiences affecting children on the platform, but claimed the company failed to act.
Another Meta executive said he could not remember writing in a presentation that the company sometimes opted to pay regulatory fines instead of making required changes.
Internal documents also suggested that Meta knew safety tools requiring users to opt in generally had low adoption rates. Despite that, the company continued introducing some safety features without making them active by default.
The potential financial consequences of losing the case had also fuelled intense speculation.
In a theoretical worst-case scenario, the maximum penalty for every child who had used one of Meta’s platforms for more than 30 minutes a day during a 12-year period could have reached $1.4 trillion (£1 trillion). That amount was roughly equivalent to Meta’s entire market value.
Such a penalty was never considered a realistic outcome, but even more plausible calculations suggested the company could have faced fines running into hundreds of billions of dollars.
Against that backdrop, the agreed settlement of up to $18 billion over 10 years is significantly smaller.
Meta has not admitted any wrongdoing as part of the settlement.
The agreement can also be viewed as a way for the company to protect its core business. Facebook and Instagram remain central to Meta’s revenues, while the billions of people using its social platforms generate valuable data that helps the company sell advertising.
Although Meta has increasingly presented itself as an artificial intelligence-focused company, it continues to rely heavily on the substantial income generated by its social media businesses.
What will Meta change?
Under the settlement, Meta has agreed to introduce several changes to the way Facebook and Instagram operate for their youngest users.
Some experts have described the measures as long overdue.
Among the changes will be a two-hour daily limit covering both platforms. This will become a default setting for users identified as teenagers. However, direct messages will not count towards the daily limit.
Meta will also mute notifications between midnight and 6am, as well as during school hours from 8am to 3pm on school days.
Likes on posts and other content will also be completely hidden for teenagers on the platforms.
Most of these measures will either become default settings or be offered as options for teenagers within six months.
Meta will take longer to introduce measures aimed at identifying children using its platforms more effectively. Those efforts could take up to a year to roll out.
The changes could eventually extend beyond the United States. Other countries are likely to examine the measures closely as they seek stronger protections for children on social media.
Meta itself has acknowledged that the new safeguards will only have their full effect if competing platforms introduce similar measures.
The social media industry remains highly competitive, but the growing global backlash over the impact of social platforms on children could put pressure on companies such as TikTok and Snapchat to adopt comparable restrictions.
That raises another question: will children continue using these platforms if companies deliberately make them more limited and less engaging?
If the major platforms become increasingly restricted, the changes could eventually contribute to a broader decline in social media use, with adults who grew up with the platforms gradually ageing out of them.
For Arturo Bejar, however, the key issue is not the number of safeguards Meta introduces but whether those measures actually protect children.
“At the end of the day, Meta needs to be held accountable for results, not efforts,” he told me.
