CT To Receive $265M In Landmark Facebook, Instagram Lawsuit

Connecticut will receive up to $265.4 million in damages following the recent settlement of a multistate lawsuit which claimed Meta's Facebook and Instagram platforms intentionally addicted children.

Attorney General William Tong said Connecticut's share is part of an overall $17.1 billion multistate settlement with Meta Platforms, Inc.

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The settlement will include the enforcement of new safety reforms to protect children on Instagram and Facebook, according to Tong.

Tong said it is the largest state settlement with a single defendant in history.

Connecticut plans to use money it receives to help remediate harm from social media, such as through mental health and crisis intervention, after school and summer school programming, and implementation of phone-free school zones, according to Tong.

Meta has a decade to pay the settlement, which is subject to the approval of U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the Northern District of California.

"Meta strip-mined the souls of America's children for maximum profit with abusive and addictive features that unleashed a youth mental health catastrophe. That ends now," Tong said.

The settlement requires Meta to implement a series of safety features on Instagram and Facebook, including:

• A two-hour daily time limit for children.
• Mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use and again at 60 and 90 minutes to interrupt endless scrolling.
• "Nighttime blocks" restricting children's access between midnight and 6 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 more effectively verify the age of young users.
• 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, including options to turn off algorithmic feed and auto-play.
• Limits on social comparison features, including beauty filters and visible "like" counts linked to poor mental health outcomes in kids and teens.
• The implementation and efficacy of the features will be regularly assessed by an independent auditor and the settling states.

This year, Connecticut lawmakers passed legislation aimed at fighting youth social media addiction. It prohibits social media companies from exposing minors to addictive algorithms and notifications without parental consent. It also calls for a series of default settings regarding account privacy, time of use, and notifications, including barring notifications between the hours of 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. Parental consent would be required to alter the default settings.

Gov. Ned Lamont said tech companies have "increasingly been taking advantage of kids, creating apps and algorithms that decrease their attention spans, drive them to become addicted, cause them to tune out real life, and harmfully impact their mental health and wellbeing."

Both the settlement and Connecticut legislation will mean stronger protection for children online, according to Lamont.

However, Lamont asserted that the "strongest protections need to be enacted on a nationwide level."