(BIVN) – The largest Big Tech settlement in history will result in millions for Hawaiʻi and a sweeping set of safety features designed to protect children on Instagram and Facebook.
On Wednesday, Hawaiʻi Attorney General Anne Lopez announced the landmark $17.1 billion multistate settlement with Meta Platforms, Inc. — after joining in a lawsuit claiming the social media company “designed Instagram with addictive features, knowingly exposed young users to serious mental harms and intentionally misled the public about the safety of its platforms, among other things.”
Under the settlement, Hawaiʻi will receive up to $76 million. Facebook and Instagram will also be required to:
- Hard cap daily time limits and “Productive Pauses” for children: for its two platforms, Instagram and Facebook, a combined two-hour daily time limit with mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use and again at 60 and 90 minutes to interrupt endless scrolling. These limits remain in effect for five years. If Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube adopt comparable terms, the daily limit on each platform will drop to 60 minutes for 10 years.
- “Nighttime blocks” restricting children’s access from 12:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.
- Limited school-time access for children, eliminating push notifications on weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 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.
- Limits on social comparison features, including beauty filters and visible “like” counts, that have been linked to poor mental health outcomes in kids and teens.
- Both the implementation and efficacy of the features will be regularly assessed by an independent auditor and the settling states.
“The adverse mental health consequences associated with excessive, unregulated access to social media are well-documented. Despite knowledge of the consequences, social media companies failed to act independently to protect our youth,” said Attorney General Lopez in a news release. “The safety features, processes, and independent monitoring required by this settlement will have a real-world positive impact for youth in Hawai‘i. I hope that Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube will read the writing on the wall and enter into similar settlements.”
From the news release:
Beginning in 2021, nearly every attorney general in the country cooperated to investigate the social media industry for designing and promoting platforms to children and teens despite known harms. After a bipartisan, nationwide investigation found that Meta designed Instagram’s features to addict children while internally documenting the resulting mental health harms and failing to warn parents, attorneys general across the country sued Meta individually or as part of a consolidated federal lawsuit. This settlement resolves those cases and claims by the other settling states and territories. The settlement also resolves the states’ claims against Meta for its sharing of nonpublic information about Facebook users with third parties, like Cambridge Analytica, leading up to the 2016 election. Hawaiʻi will also receive $4,685,127 for the Cambridge Analytica claim.
Hawaiʻi is joined by the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Northern Mariana Islands, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming in this settlement.
