Washington state will receive up to $339 million as part of a historic $17.1 billion multistate settlement with Meta, resolving allegations that the tech giant intentionally designed Facebook and Instagram with addictive features that harmed youth mental health.
Attorney General Nick Brown said Wednesday that the landmark agreement delivers on core youth-safety product changes — including hard caps on daily time limits, late-night scrolling blocks, and disabled push notifications during school hours — that state lawmakers failed to pass through legislation over the past two years.
“Let me say to the young people of Washington state: This agreement shows that your health and safety is more important than Meta’s profits,” Brown said in a news release.
Under the deal, Meta must overhaul Instagram and Facebook for young users by enforcing a two-hour combined daily time limit, turning off push notifications during school hours (8 a.m. to 3 p.m.), and blocking access late at night between midnight and 6 a.m. Teen users will also get the option to switch off algorithmic feeds in favor of a chronological timeline.
The agreement resolves claims brought by a coalition of 47 states, Washington, D.C., and three territories. While Meta acknowledged the settlement could cost up to $18 billion total over 10 years, it marked a rare legal resolution for a major platform facing nationwide youth safety litigation.
Outside the landmark Big Tobacco agreements of the late 1990s, the $17.1 billion deal represents the largest state consumer protection settlement in U.S. history. State officials and tech policy experts are framing the enforcement action as a similar watershed moment for regulating algorithmic harms and digital product design.
Washington state will receive a guaranteed baseline of $237 million from the core youth-safety agreement, with its payout potentially scaling up to nearly $339 million over the next decade if other major platforms like TikTok and Snapchat adopt comparable terms.
The Attorney General’s Office plans to use the funds to cover legal costs, bolster ongoing consumer protection enforcement, and directly fund state programs tackling the youth mental health crisis driven by social media use.
The settlement also mandates an independent third-party auditor to evaluate and report Meta’s technical compliance directly to state regulators annually over the next five years. Beyond usage limits, Meta must restrict social comparison features such as targeted beauty filters, hide public “like” counts for younger users, and implement stricter age verification to prevent children under 13 from creating accounts.
In addition to the core youth-safety agreement, Washington will receive a separate $10.2 million payment resolving long-standing state claims against Meta for sharing nonpublic user data with third parties like Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 election cycle.
Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield announced that his state’s share will total more than $125 million over 10 years.
In a public statement, Meta praised the agreement as setting a new benchmark for youth safety, while emphasizing that the restrictions should apply across the entire industry.
“While this is an important step, these protections will only be truly effective if our peers — TikTok and YouTube — put the same measures in place,” a Meta spokesperson said.
The agreement remains subject to final judicial approval in federal district court.
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