Meta will pay North Carolina up to $645 million under a landmark child-safety settlement announced Wednesday by Attorney General Jeff Jackson and 50 other state and territorial attorneys general. The company, which owns Instagram and Facebook, must also impose sweeping new default limits on how teenagers use both apps.
“The main purpose of this settlement is not money,” Jackson said at a press conference alongside Gov. Josh Stein and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Mo Green. “It is to protect kids and empower parents.”
“Meta did not see children as precious beings to be protected,” Stein said. “They saw them as dollar signs to be exploited.”
Meta will pay up to $17.1 billion to the states overall. Jackson’s office called it the largest big-tech settlement ever and the second-largest state consumer protection settlement in history.
North Carolina will receive a guaranteed minimum of $451 million, according to the settlement. That amount will be paid with installments through 2035, with the first payment of $45 million dropping later this year, Jackson said.
The case originated in October 2023 when Stein, who was attorney general at the time, joined 32 other states in suing Meta over allegations the company used its platforms to get children hooked while publicly downplaying the risks of social media.
Jackson said the states settled for two reasons: safety changes and speed.
“We could get more money from litigation,” Jackson said, but the child-safety upgrades would not have come through a verdict. Continued litigation “would mean that we were still many years away from bringing any of these child safety upgrades to these platforms. It would risk losing another generation. That’s a risk we cannot take.”
Under the settlement, Meta will impose a two-hour daily limit for users identified as 13 to 17 years old on the Instagram and Facebook platforms. Moreover, the apps’ feeds will go dark between midnight and 6 a.m., and a new “school mode” will silence push notifications during school hours.
Additionally, like counts will be hidden by default, filters that mimic plastic surgery will be disabled, teen accounts will be set to private, and scrolling pauses will interrupt long sessions, Jackson said.
Parents can loosen or tighten the limits by linking their own accounts to their teen’s account, Jackson added, and an independent auditor will check the company’s work. The changes should reach teen accounts within two to six months of court approval.
Meta must also do more to verify ages and keep children under 13 off the platforms. Jackson said the court order will require Meta to identify users’ ages with 95% certainty for children 13 to 15 and 90% certainty for ages 16 and 17.
“If they fail to do that, they will be in violation of this order, and we will take them back to court,” he said.
The settlement does not cover other social media platforms like YouTube, Snap, or TikTok. But it is written so that if those companies join substantively similar agreements within five years, the “industry-wide adoption” clause unlocks the additional $194 million for North Carolina.
“We are happy to talk to TikTok and Snap and Google about this,” Jackson said. “We’re also happy to take them to court, like we did with Meta, and like we’re doing right now with TikTok. This is an easy way or a hard way situation.”
In a statement, Meta framed the deal as “a new industry standard” and pointed at the same companies. “While this is an important step, these protections will only be truly effective if our peers — TikTok and YouTube — put the same measures in place.” The company did not admit wrongdoing.
Lawmakers in the General Assembly will decide how the money gets allocated, although Jackson has recommendations. He said his office will suggest the funds go to youth mental health, but that specific programs are “a conversation for a later date.”
“The ink is barely dry on this,” he said.
As evidence of the need for more spending on youth mental health, Green pointed to the 2025 NC Youth Risk Behavior Survey, presented to the State Board of Education earlier this month, and described its results as both “real progress” and “real need.” Nearly three in 10 high schoolers reported persistent sadness or hopelessness, and about one in nine seriously considered suicide.
“These numbers have improved from two years ago, and I’m certainly glad that they have,” Green said. “But they are far too high.”
The settlement lands as lawmakers weigh restrictions of their own. House Bill 301, Social Media and AI Safety, would bar children under 14 from holding social media accounts and require parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds. The Senate passed the measure, 48-0, in June. The House then voted 111-0 not to concur with Senate changes, and the bill has sat in a conference committee since June 24.
