Alaska Attorney General Mills announced a landmark $17.1 billion multistate settlement with Meta Platforms, Inc. – one of the largest state consumer protection settlements in history, along with a requirement that Meta implement a sweeping set of safety features designed to protect children on Instagram and Facebook.

The agreement resolves claims by Alaska and 46 other 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 aims to fundamentally transform how the entire social media industry designs products for kids and teens. Under the settlement, Alaska will receive around $16 million.

“This settlement was a necessary and imperative step to protect our children,” Governor Mike Dunleavy stated on Aug. 26. “Social media promised us connection and the ability to productively engage with each other in life’s joyful and mundane moments. What social media gave us was a generation of children scarred by bullying, harassment, doom-scrolling and predation. This is a good first step towards protecting our children from online dangers, and I hope we see more actions like this in the future.”

The Department of Law Consumer Protection Unit represented Alaska’s interests in the settlement. Their work helped reach a settlement that included safety features as well as financial restitution.

Meta designed Instagram’s features to addict children while internally documenting the resulting mental health harms and failing to warn parents.

“As a mom of two, I can’t tell you what a relief this settlement brings to me knowing there will be better safeguards on Meta’s platform to keep teens healthy and positively engaged,” said Acting Alaska Attorney General Cori Mills. “This truly is a historic moment, and I am hopeful it sets the precedent for social media platforms going forward.”

Mills acknowledged that this problem extends well beyond one company and credited Meta for being the first major platform to reach a comprehensive resolution on youth safety.

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 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 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 a.m. to 3 p.m. during the school year.

— Robust age assurance measures to verify the age of young users more effectively.

— 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, which 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.

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 harm. 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 across the country sued Meta individually or as part of a consolidated federal lawsuit. This settlement resolves those cases and claims by the other settling states and territories.

“Social media has become a near-constant part of teenagers’ lives, and their mental health has declined as they struggle under constant social comparison,” said Assistant Attorney General Helen Mendolia. “This settlement equips parents to limit how Facebook and Instagram disrupt the school day and their kids’ sleep, creating safeguards that encourage teenagers to put down their phones and reengage with the world around them.”

State officials are encouraging anyone who believes they were subjected to unfair or deceptive business practices to submit a complaint to the Consumer Protection Unit.

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