Social media giant Meta will pay North Carolina up to $645 million and make major safety upgrades in a landmark consumer protection settlement announced by Attorney General Jeff Jackson at the end of August.
North Carolina’s portion comes from the $17.1 billion Meta has agreed to pay across 47 states in the second-largest state consumer protection settlement in history. The suit, initially brought in 2023, alleged Meta specifically designed Instagram and Facebook to hook children on their apps.
“Parents are up against technology that has been engineered specifically to capture and hold their child’s attention,” Jackson said at a press conference announcing the settlement.
It’s an allegation supported by Meta’s own internal documents, which showed that researchers knew which features hooked children into coming back, and which delivered a dopamine response. They knew millions of children were using Meta’s platforms between midnight and 4 a.m., interrupting their sleep cycle and disrupting their school days. Other documents showed Meta’s own employees warned that face-altering filters could be contributing to body-image issues for its teenage users.
“Meta did not see children as precious beings to be protected. They saw them as dollar signs to be exploited,” North Carolina Governor Josh Stein said.
Under the settlement, the company will introduce new child-friendly measures such as default time limits that give more control to parents who want to set screen time quotas, pop-up ads that appear after 15 minutes to discourage endless scrolling, night and school modes that restrict feeds during certain hours, and hiding like and reaction counts on posts by default for teens.
North Carolina is guaranteed at least $451 million from Meta, with the additional $194 million coming to the state when YouTube and TikTok agree to similar online safety strategies. The attorneys general are pushing for industry-wide adoption of these protections.
North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction Mo Green said the settlement will go a long way toward improving mental health support for students.
“We don’t have nearly enough programs or personnel like school counselors, school social workers, school psychologists, and school nurses,” said Green. “The resources and commitment announced [by the settlement] are essential to closing these gaps.”
