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Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta agreed this week to pay approximately $18 billion to settle a landmark multistate lawsuit alleging that Facebook and Instagram were deliberately engineered to addict children — while Florida said the payout was pocket change and refused to join.
The settlement, reached August 27, covers 47 states, the District of Columbia, and several U.S. territories. The deal came after opening statements in a federal trial in Oakland, California, where state attorneys general argued Meta knowingly built addictive features into its platforms and then lied to parents about it.
Meta did not admit wrongdoing. In a court filing, the company flatly “denies the allegations against it and that it has any liability to the Plaintiffs.” But Zuckerberg, who had been expected to testify, suddenly had no reason to take the stand.
The settlement funds can be used for “youth online safety initiatives and other state priorities,” Meta said — meaning the money goes to government bureaucracies, not the families whose kids were harmed.
In exchange, Meta agreed to cosmetic reforms: a default two-hour daily time limit for teen accounts, a midnight-to-6am blackout window, muted notifications during school hours, and the option for teens to choose a non-algorithmic feed. Meta will also hide likes on teen posts and block certain cosmetic filters. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s team immediately called on TikTok and YouTube to adopt the same framework — or the final $5.3 billion tranche of the settlement won’t be paid.
Florida’s Attorney General James Uthmeier saw through it. He called the settlement a “weak payoff attempt” and “pennies on the dollar” for a company worth over $1.3 trillion.
“The payouts are peanuts compared to the profound harms Meta’s profit-driven addictive features inflicted on kids,” Uthmeier said, “and a slap on the wrist for a trillion-dollar corp that’ll pay more to lawyers than to the states.”
“Trying to wipe out a decade of harm to the nation’s youth with one month’s cash flow is an insult,” he added. “Corporations like Meta will never learn a lesson if they don’t incur real costs for breaking the law.”
Florida intends to take Meta to trial separately, telling the company directly: “We’ll see them at trial.”
The core allegation — which a federal court is reviewing — is that Meta executives knew their engagement algorithms were triggering anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, and eating disorders in teenage girls and boys. Internal documents showed Meta tracked these harms and continued deploying the features anyway.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta called the settlement a victory, saying Meta agreed to “massive transformations” that would reduce harm within months. But the reforms do nothing for the millions of children already damaged, and rely entirely on Meta’s self-reporting to verify compliance.
Big Tech spent years lobbying against children’s privacy protections, fought state bills tooth and nail, and then wrote itself a settlement that keeps the cash flowing while parents get a press release. Florida is right to say no.
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