The story so far: On August 26, Meta reached a landmark settlement of up to $17.1 billion with 29 U.S. States, including California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey, ending a lawsuit which the States had brought against the tech giant, accusing it of hiding harms caused by its platforms to children and deliberately using tactics to keep teens engaged or ‘addicted’ to its platforms. The settlement also came with certain conditions on how Meta should change its safety features on Instagram and Facebook.
What was the lawsuit?
The 233-page lawsuit, first filed against Meta in 2023, alleged that the company regularly collected data on children under the age of 13 without parental consent thus breaking various State and federal privacy laws. It also alleged that the company deliberately designed platforms to be addictive in order to keep teens engaged, leading to mental health disorders such as depression, anxiety etc. The suit accused Meta of refusing to “abandon its use of known harmful features” and instead, focusing solely on profits and financial gain over the safety of children.
The matter went to trial on August 18, 2026, in Oakland, California, with U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers overseeing the proceedings. The trial saw internal documents from the tech giant pointing towards addictive behaviours among teens using Instagram as well as witness testimonies from former Meta employees stating that the company had repeatedly ignored warning signs.
Meta’s own company documents, of which a few had been leaked as far back as 2021 itself, revealed that a Facebook study had found that 13.5% of British teen girls in a survey said that their suicidal thoughts became more frequent after they joined Instagram. A study by internal researchers of the company on Instagram titled ‘Teen mental health deep dive’ had found that some of the problems, especially related to social comparison, were issues systemic of only Instagram and not social media as a whole.
As per a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) investigation, the internal researchers had said that while other media mostly focus on the face and ‘jokey’ filters (SnapChat), Instagram focused on the body and lifestyle in general, which led to heightened comparisons and feelings of inadequacy.
A key witness for the States was Arturo Béjar, a former Meta safety engineer, who stated on record that Meta was aware of the harm its products caused children, which included pushing content from sexual predators and violent and graphic images. He said that while he raised the issue to various Facebook and Instagram executives repeatedly, nothing was done to resolve it. He raised concerns about features such as the ‘infinite scroll’ which keep users addicted and also gains the company revenue vis-a-vis targeted ads.
Meta has however denied all these allegations. The company said that the statements from documents were cherry-picked and taken out of context. Paul Schmidt, a lawyer for Meta, said that the company had undertaken a variety of measures to address teens’ over-engagement with Instagram, and that it had disabled more than 1 million accounts of young users.
Even after the settlement, Meta has denied wrong-doing.
Can social media be addictive?
The American Society of Addiction Medicine defines an addiction as a “treatable, chronic medical disease involving complex interactions among brain circuits, genetics, the environment, and an individual’s life experiences. People with addiction use substances or engage in behaviors that become compulsive and often continue despite harmful consequences.” Social media addiction can be classified as a behavioural addiction which stimulates our brain’s reward system. It makes you engage in an action which you know to be harmful, yet cannot stop.
The WSJ investigation had quoted a researcher saying ““They (teens) often feel ‘addicted’ and know that what they’re seeing is bad for their mental health but feel unable to stop themselves.”
A review paper published by Jashvini Amirthalingam and Anika Khera in Cureus in 2024 states that social media ‘addiction’ is shaped by a combination of “psychological factors, such as low self-esteem and mental health issues, technological mechanisms like infinite scrolling and personalised notifications, and social influences, including peer pressure and exposure to idealised content”. A potential ‘treatment’ for the same would include cognitive therapy, educational awareness, parental strategies such as placing limits and boundaries on social media use etc.
However, social media has not been medically recognised as an addiction. Therefore, there aren’t any clear cut guidelines on how to diagnose, measure, and treat such ‘behaviours’.
This point was a key argument by Meta’s lawyers who claimed that social media addiction was not an established psychiatric condition. They were arguing against claims that Meta had intentionally designed its products to be addictive to teens. Meta has consistently held that their platforms were not designed to be ‘addictive’.
What next?
As part of the settlement deal, Meta has agreed to implement certain safety features in its products which include a default two-hour daily time limit for teens which they can only turn off with a parent’s permission; bringing in a ‘school mode’ where notifications between 8 am and 3 pm will be muted during school days; a default ‘night mode’ which mutes notification during the night; the choice to curate a feed which is not driven by algorithms; ability to turn-off autoplay for content; blocking of likes on teens’ accounts and those they interact with in order to reduce comparison; and blocking of extreme make-up filters.
With respect to the two-hour daily time limit and night mode features, Meta said that these features would work only if other social media platforms also follow suit.
“Our new Time Limit commitments, Night Mode features and usage limits during school hours set the right path forward for our whole industry, but this framework will only work if all our peers join us,” C.J. Mahoney, Meta’s chief legal officer said.
The settlement has been called historic as it mandates Meta to make certain concrete changes regarding safety measures for children and teens. The payouts will also enable the States to use it to address children’s mental health concerns. Judge Rogers called the settlement “a good step forward”.
However, some critics state that since Meta has not changed its revenue model, which still prioritises endless scrolling and targeted ads, such rudimentary safety features are just a smoke screen which will not lead to fundamental change.
Published – August 27, 2026 10:16 am IST