Pennsylvania will receive part of a nearly $17 billion settlement that a multistate coalition reached with Facebook’s parent company, Meta, to mitigate harms associated with young people using social media.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday called the settlement the largest involving a big tech company. An additional 46 states, several U.S. territories and Washington, D.C., joined in the case.
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Attorneys general sued Meta after a bipartisan, nationwide investigation found that the company designed Instagram’s features to addict children while internally documenting the resulting mental health harms and failing to warn parents, officials with Sunday’s office said in a statement.
Meta also owns Instagram and Threads, among other messaging apps.
Meta has denied the allegations, saying it has worked hard to protect children on its platforms, as reported by USA TODAY. The company had argued it could not have misled consumers about whether its services were addictive because social media addiction is not a recognized psychiatric condition.
Lebanon District Attorney Pier Hess Graf and state Attorney General Dave Sunday announced the launch of the county’s new LETI program Oct. 15. The program allows law enforcement to divert individuals struggling with behavioral health needs from potential prosecution.
How much money will Pennsylvania get?
Pennsylvania officials anticipate receiving $516 million over a period of several years. The state could receive as much as $729 million.
The total hinges on other social media companies such as TikTok and Snapchat agreeing to the same changes that will include ways of restricting younger people’s use of the platforms.
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What will the Meta settlement do?
The settlement still needs approval in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. It requires Meta to implement features designed to curb how much time kids can use their platforms and empower parents with more user-friendly parental controls.
“This is not just about money,” Sunday said during an Aug. 26 news conference. “It includes meaningful protections addressing harms social media can cause young people.
“Parents should not have to become tech experts simply to keep their children safe online.”
The implementation and efficacy of the features will be regularly assessed by an independent auditor and the settling states, Sunday said.
Regulations include:
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 minutes 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 midnight to 6 a.m.
Limited school-time access for children, eliminating push notifications on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 3 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.
Limits on social comparison features, including beauty filters and visible “like” counts, which have been linked to poor mental health outcomes in kids and teens.
What about lawsuits against other platforms?
Sunday’s office filed two similar suits in August ― against TikTok, Inc., in Allegheny County Court and against Snap Inc., in Philadelphia County Court.
They allege the platforms exposed children to content involving sexual themes, drugs and other mature subjects despite representations made to app stores and that they failed to protect children from compulsive or addictive use of the app.
Sunday said his office will continue to be aggressive with other tech companies in an effort to get them, ultimately, to where Meta is with its settlement.
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“We hope they are watching this and see this is the right path to move forward, not only for themselves but for the children they are using to increase their revenue,” Sunday said of the other tech companies. “If our goal is to protect children, we need these types of changes to occur.”
Mark Walters is the USA TODAY Network Pennsylvania statehouse reporter. Reach him at mwalters@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Here’s what Pennsylvania gets from the Meta settlement