Social media giant Meta will pay over $1 billion to Texas and implement sweeping protections for children as part of a settlement with the state, Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Wednesday.
The settlement comes as Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, tentatively agreed to a $17 billion payout to resolve a separate lawsuit brought by 33 states, which Texas was not a part of. The historic settlement, the first of this scale from a social media company, will end the ongoing trial in that case.
The states allege that Meta contributed to the growing youth mental health crisis by deliberately designing their social media platforms to be addicting to kids and teens.
As part of Texas’ settlement, Meta will apply stricter age verification measures and institute a daily two-hour limit for teens. All notifications from these platforms will be disabled by default during school hours, and the company will create a nighttime mode to restrict access for teens, Paxton said in a press release.
“It is my mission to fundamentally change and strengthen the standards for child safety online, and this settlement is a major step forward in the fight to ensure our kids are protected online,” Paxton said.
Meta’s chief legal officer, C.J. Mahoney, said in a statement that the new safety rules will empower parents to manage their children’s use of these platforms. Mahoney also called on YouTube, TikTok and other social media platforms to follow suit with the same restrictions, saying it “will only work if all our peers join us. Because teens move fluidly across dozens of apps, we need an industry-wide solution.”
Paxton is also suing TikTok, with that case expected to go to trial in the fall.
The case marks Paxton’s second settlement with Meta for north of $1 billion. In 2024, the tech giant agreed to pay Texas $1.4 billion to settle a lawsuit that accused the company of using personal biometric data without users’ authorization.
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