On Wednesday, Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, announced a landmark legal settlement in a trial spanning 48 states, Washington, D.C., and three U.S. territories. In addition to paying up to $18 billion to those states and territories, the company has agreed to make significant changes to its social-media platforms, including imposing two-hour time limits for teens, stopping notifications during the school day, removing “like” counts and cosmetic filters, and limiting teen usage between midnight and 6 a.m.
This is good news for children, and for their mental health. But today’s settlement marks the beginning, not the end, of long-sought changes from companies like Meta. For more than a decade, activists, parents, whistleblowers, and lawmakers have been fighting for regulations on the ability of social-media platforms to prey on the vulnerabilities of children’s underdeveloped brains. I myself have spent years researching and writing about this subject. We have relentlessly demanded accountability from companies like Meta, and we have been resisted at every turn.
So let’s be clear: Meta is no hero here. The company has spent decades pushing dangerous, algorithmically driven content into the feeds of young people and profiting from it. Even worse, according to internal files, Meta knew what they were doing was dangerous, and elected to do nothing about it. Even now, they are making these changes begrudgingly, and only because they see the growing backlash coming their way. Some skepticism is therefore warranted. You can’t pee in a well for 10 years and then expect people to believe the drinking water is clean.
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