Statement on 29 States Settling Lawsuit with Meta

Fairplay Executive Director Josh Golin released the following statement today:

“This is a watershed moment for the growing movement to protect children from addictive and dangerously designed social media. In addition to a significant financial penalty, the state attorneys general have secured the most significant injunctive relief yet from Meta, including a number of measures to protect young people’s sleep, such as disabling Instagram overnight for minors’ accounts. The settlement also requires disabling addictive and harmful features like displays of like counts and plastic surgery filters and new guardrails to protect children from predatory adults. We also greatly appreciate that Meta will be required to identify both under-13 and under-18 users without infringing on the privacy of adults. We thank the state attorneys general for their historic leadership in fighting for our children’s safety and well-being online.

“This settlement also underscores the need for KOSA, the Kids Online Safety Act. As internal documents have shown over and over, Meta and other social media companies deliberately design their products to addict kids, and that is the root cause of so many mental health difficulties and serious online harms for minors. While it’s gratifying to see state attorneys general take action to hold companies like Meta accountable, we also need our federal government to step in to force these companies to make their products safe for kids by design so that every child on every platform will be protected, both now and in the future. KOSA has robust, bipartisan support from over three-quarters of the US Senate. We call on Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Minority Leader Charles Schumer to bring the bill to the floor for a vote next month.”