A settlement between Facebook parent company Meta and most states appears to address social-media features that experts most often blame for worsening young people’s mental health, though the details of the new safety measures are to be determined.
Read more Gov. Jared Polis pardons 29 Coloradans convicted of crimes
On Wednesday, Meta agreed to an $18 billion settlement with 47 states for mental health harm allegedly caused by its products. Colorado’s share will come close to $615 million over the next nine years.
Colorado and three other states had sued the company, arguing it designed Facebook and Instagram to ensnare young users, then lied to the public about it. The trial in Oakland, California, had been underway, with former employees taking the stand to testify that Meta knew Facebook and Instagram harmed some young people, but didn’t take steps to improve safety.
Over the last few years, studies have made it increasingly clear that a segment of children and teens are particularly vulnerable to harm from social media, especially those who already had unhealthy body images or compulsive tendencies, said Dr. Joel Stoddard, a psychiatrist at Children’s Hospital Colorado.
Teens’ brains are wired for seeking new experiences and forming relationships with their peers — important features for a time when they’re figuring out who they are and where they fit in society, Stoddard said. Social media companies designed their platforms to take advantage of that, making it harder to log off, he said.
Social media platforms, as they currently exist, can harm youth mental health through showing users content that makes their existing vulnerabilities worse, and by making it harder to disengage, said Sarah Domoff, an assistant professor who teaches a class on the topic at the State University of New York at Albany.
The effects worsen if teens are scrolling late at night, or in place of getting exercise or in-person socialization, she said.
“It’s not just what you see, but when you see it, and if it’s crowding out things that are so important to mental health, like sleep,” she said.
Internal documents uncovered by The Wall Street Journal showed that Meta knew Instagram was harmful to a portion of teen girls and that about one in eight Facebook users used the platform to the point of interfering with sleep or work.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser on Wednesday described the settlement as justice for young people who experienced mental health harm and their families, as well as a possible blueprint for future agreements with other companies.
“They harvested data to make money and told the public there was nothing to worry about,” Weiser said at a news conference. “They put profits ahead of public health.”
As part of the settlement, Meta agreed to do more to verify users’ ages, preventing children from opening accounts and placing guardrails around teens, such as better parental controls, automatic blocks of content focused on topics such as eating disorders and self-harm, hiding “likes” to discourage comparison with others and limiting beauty filters.
Read more How the Trump administration is expanding its immigration crackdown to people entering legally
It also will set a two-hour “hard cap” on teens’ combined daily use of Facebook and Instagram, with mandatory pauses after 15 minutes, one hour and 90 minutes. The company agreed to lower the cap to one hour if Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube do the same.
The apps won’t send push notifications to teens between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays during the school year and would block them from accessing content between midnight and 6 a.m.
States agreed to spend the settlement money on youth mental health — a broad category that will allow for significant variation from place to place. An independent auditor will check if Meta is fulfilling its obligations, but doesn’t have the power to enforce more changes if teens are still struggling.
“With respect to whether it had the intended effect, that’s a societal challenge we’ll have to take on,” Weiser said. “We need to address social media because it has been part of the problem” of poor youth mental health.
Meta faced two recent court losses, though before Wednesday’s settlement, the company had said it will appeal both. A California jury found it liable for mental health problems a young woman suffered after using social media compulsively as a child, awarding her $6 million. The jury also found YouTube owner Google liable, though the majority of the financial penalty fell on Meta.
In a separate trial in New Mexico, jurors assessed penalties of $375 million after finding Meta allowed child exploitation to continue on its apps and attempted to cover up the problem. A judge later added an additional $567 million fine and ordered Meta to put time restrictions in place for underage users, without setting a deadline.
The company’s estimated value is around $1.5 trillion.
Most experts don’t call for banning youth from social media altogether, since it can be a place for marginalized people to find support they aren’t getting in-person. Domoff, the professor in New York, said the first step toward a healthier relationship with the platforms is to assess whether they’re supporting or harming someone’s mental health, and if they’re replacing other things the person values.
For most people, a small amount of time on social media leads to greater connection with others, Stoddard said. But that leaves parents in a difficult position, trying to enforce limits on something designed to be hard to put down, he said. Typically, it goes best when parents and teens can agree on certain phone-free times or places, such as the dinner table or the bedroom while sleeping.
“It’s a society-made issue that’s imposed on families,” he said. “Parenting is hard enough without this added layer.”
Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get health news sent straight to your inbox.
