Kansas to receive $134 million in transformative Meta settlement

TOPEKA — The parent company of social media platforms Facebook and Instagram agreed to one of the largest state consumer protection settlements in American history, paying $17.1 billion to most U.S. states and territories and promising to implement sweeping safety features to protect kids.

Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach said Wednesday the state’s $134 million portion of the settlement with Meta “marks a down payment on an industry-wide transformation that will finally prioritize our children’s well-being over corporate profits.”

“For too long, Meta deliberately designed Instagram and Facebook with addictive features that preyed on kids’ developing brains, exposed them to serious mental-health harms, and then misled parents about the dangers,” he said in a news release.

The settlement ended a case that 47 states, Washington, D.C., and three territories filed against Meta Platforms Inc. in 2023, arguing the social media giant designed its platforms to be addictive, knew it mentally harmed children, and misled the public about the platforms’ safety.

Meta must now roll out a list of protections, including daily time limits, mandatory pauses to reduce continuous scrolling, nighttime blocks, limited access during school hours, age verification measures, content controls, parental controls and limits on beauty filters and like counts.

Kobach said child safety on social media extends beyond one company. Meta will pay out just 70% of the settlement amount — $12.7 million — unless TikTok and Alphabet, which owns YouTube, adopt comparable measures.

The settlement’s magnitude is second only to the big tobacco settlements of the 1990s, Kobach said.