Meta, the parent company of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, has agreed to pay roughly $16.68 billion to American states in a settlement that ends a lawsuit brought by 29 US states. The states accused the company of designing its platforms to hook teenagers on social media, according to a report by Brazil's G1 citing the Reuters news agency.

The settlement also requires Meta to roll out changes for teen users of Facebook and Instagram across the United States, including daily usage limits and overnight access blocks, according to court documents cited by G1. The deal closes what had been considered one of the most significant legal tests of claims that social media companies harm young users.

Separately, the same settlement resolves lawsuits filed by California, Illinois, New Mexico and Washington, D.C., over privacy violations tied to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a consulting firm harvested personal data from millions of Facebook users without consent (a case that first became public in 2018 and reshaped global debates over data privacy). Those jurisdictions will receive $459.3 million to close the related cases.

Sums in dispute

In a filing submitted before the trial began, Meta said the four states involved in the Cambridge Analytica litigation were seeking fines of up to $1.4 trillion. The states did not disclose a specific figure but indicated at a pretrial hearing that the amount they sought was closer to $200 billion, along with additional damages and a court order forcing Meta to make significant changes to its platforms and to prevent children from creating accounts.

The settlement follows testimony that exposed internal failures at the company. According to G1, Instagram head Adam Mosseri admitted during the trial that he promoted newly launched teen safety tools without disclosing that they were barely used. Other witnesses said Meta knew those features were ineffective and, according to allegations cited in the reporting, had been "designed to fail." Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was expected to testify at some point during the proceedings, though the settlement may have made that testimony unnecessary.