Illinois will get nearly $768 million from Meta settlement in social media addiction lawsuit

Illinois will receive nearly $768 million from a landmark Meta lawsuit settlement over social media addiction, Attorney General Kwame Raoul announced Wednesday.

The company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by 47 states alleging the company deliberately designed its platforms to be addictive to children, exposed young users to serious mental health harms, and seriously misled the public about the safety of its platforms.

"My interpretation, the way that they're made is how can we design this to make it as impossible and challenging for parents to control so that they basically throw their hands up," said Jared Rapp, father of three. He said limiting access to social media for his kids, including the amount of time they spend on it and the content they see, is a daily struggle. 

The suit also alleged Meta violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by collecting and using personal data from people under 13 years old.

The lawsuit was originally filed in 2023. 

Raoul said, under the settlement, beyond the $768 million share Illinois gets, Meta is also required to implement a series of safety features on Instagram and Facebook, from daily time limits to more robust age verification and stronger content controls.

Raoul also filed a lawsuit against TikTok in 2024 for addictive features, harmful business practices targeting children, and alleging the company also deceived the public about the platform's dangers. That lawsuit has not yet been settled nor gone to trial, though TikTok has recently settled several lawsuits filed by individual users for addictive features, and the Justice Department recently announced a $400 million settlement for lawsuits regarding children's privacy under COPPA.

Raoul also recently joined other states in suing xAI, which owns social media platform X and its AI chatbot Grok, over AI-generated nonconsensual sexual images and child sex abuse material.

The funds from the settlement are set to be paid out over a 10 year period. The money will go to things like mental health services and youth programs. 

What safety features are Meta required to implement?

Along with monetary compensation, Raoul outlined a series of safety measures Meta will be required to implement on Facebook and Instagram as part of this settlement.

Both platforms must implement daily time limits and "productive pauses" for children. That means a combined two-hour time limit for both Instagram and Facebook, with mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use, as well as at 60 and 90 minutes to interrupt endless scrolling. The time limits will remain in effect for five years, but if Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube adopt comparable terms the daily limit on each platform will drop to 60 minutes for 10 years, according to Raoul's news release.

Meta must also put in place several time-of-day-based use limitations: a nighttime block restricting access to feeds and turning off notifications between 12 a.m. and 6 a.m., and school day limits on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. during the school year, which will block push notifications from both Facebook and Instagram.

Meta must also implement robust age assurance measures to verify users' ages; stronger more user-friendly parental controls; and age-appropriate content controls that include stronger safeguards against bullying, content promoting eating disorders and content related to suicide and self-harm. Meta is also now required to turn off teens' access to beauty filters for pictures that change users' skin tones or mimic cosmetic surgery.

Finally, Meta must turn off or limit social comparison features, including visible "likes" for teen users.

Raoul said an independent auditor will evaluate the implementation of these injunctive relief terms for the next five years. 

Meta has now called on other platforms like TikTok and YouTube to implement the same or similar safety features on their platforms. 

"We need an industry-wide solution," said Meta Chief Legal Officer CJ Mahoney in a video the company posted after the settlement was announced.

Jim Speta, a professor of law at Northwestern University Law School, said the settlement likely impacts other platforms facing their own legal battles.

"Both the state's attorney general and Meta were intending to set a standard that becomes the standard in the industry," he said. 

Parents just hope these changes will put more responsibility on platforms.

"I'm ecstatic to hear about it because I think one of the biggest problems is that it's on the parents to be the bad guy," he said.