Meta vs almost the entire US.
New Mexico was only the beginning

It began earlier. But New Mexico went all the way

In December 2023, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued Meta Platforms.

The allegations went far beyond the familiar complaint that “children spend too long on their phones”.

The state alleged, among other things, that Facebook and Instagram did not sufficiently protect minors against sexual exploitation, contact from adults and harmful recommendation mechanisms. The attorney general's office conducted its own investigation using accounts posing as underage users.

Meta disputed this account from the outset and stressed its investment in safety systems, moderation and tools for teenagers.

This is where the first clear distinction matters.

An attorney general's allegation is not a judgment.

But in New Mexico, a judgment followed.

On 24 March 2026, a jury found Meta liable for breaching the state's Unfair Practices Act. It found 75,000 violations, each attracting the maximum statutory penalty of $5,000.

The total: $375 million.

That was only the first stage.

Then it became even more expensive

On 6 August, the court concluded the second part of the proceedings.

Judge Bryan Biedscheid found that Meta's actions had created a public nuisance — a concept in US law which, very broadly, means a problem harming the wider community rather than just an individual user.

The earlier $375 million was joined by $567 million for measures including young people's safety and mental health.

The judgments therefore totalled:

$942 million.

But money is only part of the story.

The court also ordered Meta to make a series of changes in New Mexico for users under 18. These include more effective age assurance, usage limits, disabling night-time notifications, additional safeguards against child sexual exploitation, restrictions involving nude images and minors' interactions with sexual AI chatbots.

The orders are to remain in force for five years under court supervision.

Particularly significant for the wider industry, the court rejected the argument that Meta was fully protected in this case by Section 230 — the provision that has long been one of the most important legal safeguards for US internet platforms in cases involving user-generated content.

For Big Tech, that could matter far more than the billion dollars itself.

Because the problem is no longer just the content

For years, internet platforms' standard defence went something like this:

the user published something.

The user sent a message.

The user broke the law.

The platform merely provided a service.

But a growing number of disputes are no longer solely about what a user put online.

They concern how the platform was designed.

Who can find a child's account?

What does the algorithm recommend next?

How long does the app try to keep a user engaged?

When does it send a notification?

What does it do after fifteen, sixty or ninety minutes of continuous scrolling?

Should a thirteen-year-old's account operate under exactly the same rules as a thirty-year-old's?

This is where a much more interesting battle is now beginning.

Not over an individual post.

Over product architecture.

Then almost the whole of America came to the table

On 26 August 2026, something even bigger happened.

Meta reached a broad settlement with US attorneys general over allegations concerning children's safety, addictive features on Facebook and Instagram, and the collection of minors' data.

Official state statements give a figure of up to $17.1 billion. Among other things, the settlement ended federal proceedings involving 29 states.

If you have seen headlines quoting $16.7 billion, $17.1 billion or $18 billion, the journalists have not suddenly lost their calculators.

Those figures describe slightly different parts of the agreements.

Reuters, citing court documents, gives approximately $16.68 billion for the main social-media settlement. Added to that is around $459 million connected to separate claims relating to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Hence the approximately $17.1 billion quoted in attorneys general's statements.

And that is still not the end.

Texas struck its own deal

Texas was not part of the main federal lawsuit.

On 26 August, it announced a separate agreement with Meta worth more than $1 billion.

That agreement also provides additional safeguards for young users.

Add the separate Texas deal to the wider settlement of roughly $17.1 billion, and we begin to see why Meta's own statement refers to approximately $18 billion.

This is why, in cases like these, it pays to look one level deeper than the headline.

“Meta will pay $18 billion” sounds impressive.

But part of that figure is conditional, part concerns other claims, and payments are spread over years.

$18 billion, with an asterisk

According to Meta, most of the main agreement is to last ten years.

For teenagers, Facebook and Instagram are to introduce, among other things, a default combined limit of two hours a day, which users will not be able to disable themselves without parental permission.

Some features will also be blocked from midnight to 6 am, most notifications muted during school hours, and reminders shown during longer sessions.

Meta also committed to developing its age-assurance systems.

The financial side is interesting too.

Reuters describes around $12.7 billion in guaranteed payments and around $5 billion dependent on additional conditions, including major competitors introducing similar measures.

So Meta has done more than reach a settlement.

It is also trying to bring about a situation in which similar restrictions apply across more of the industry.

That is hardly surprising.

If you have to restrict your own product, it makes business sense to want TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat to avoid receiving a free competitive advantage at the same time.

Meta has not admitted: “yes, we did it”

This is the second important distinction.

The settlement is not an admission by Meta of the allegations.

The company consistently maintains that it has invested in young users' safety for years, developing Teen Accounts, parental controls, content restrictions and automated age-detection systems.

In its statement on the settlement, Meta presents it primarily as establishing a shared standard for protecting teenagers, and calls on YouTube and TikTok to adopt similar measures.

In the New Mexico case, however, the company announced an appeal. In August, it also sought a stay of enforcement pending the appeal.

So $942 million is a judgment, but it is not yet the end of the legal process.

Florida says: not enough

There is also Florida.

And here things become a little more... American.

The state did not join the agreement.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier considered the settlement insufficiently painful for a company of Meta's size and announced that the state would continue its court battle.

Florida has its own case against Meta, begun in 2023.

In practice, that leaves two particularly interesting exceptions on the US map.

New Mexico, which has already gone all the way and won at trial.

And Florida, which looks at a multibillion-dollar settlement and effectively says:

“no thanks — we'll try on our own”.

Meta is not the only one

This may be the most important part of the whole story.

We are no longer simply watching:

the US versus Meta.

It increasingly looks like:

the US versus the way modern social media operates.

Google/YouTube, TikTok/ByteDance and Snapchat also face thousands of lawsuits brought by individuals, families, schools and other institutions.

According to Reuters, the proceedings include allegations that platforms knowingly designed features to maximise young people's use of their services while providing insufficient information about the possible consequences.

The companies reject the allegations, pointing to their safeguards and to disputes over the scientific evidence for a direct link between social-media use and particular mental-health problems.

Is there evidence that the internet can cause harm?

Of course.

Does that automatically mean every teenager's depression is caused by Instagram?

Of course not.

That is precisely why these cases matter.

They force both sides to move beyond tweets, press conferences and corporate PR to evidence, documents, experts and specific product mechanisms.

Europe takes a slightly different approach

On our side of the Atlantic, we do not yet have an equivalent to the large US alliance of state attorneys general.

We do have regulators, though.

On 29 April 2026, the European Commission provisionally foundthat Facebook and Instagram may breach the Digital Services Act because their safeguards against children under 13 using the services are insufficient.

The Commission highlighted, among other things, how easy it is to enter a false date of birth during registration. This remains a preliminary finding, not a final penalty.

In the UK, Ofcom requires the largest platforms — including Facebook and Instagram — to demonstrate that they effectively enforce age restrictions, reduce grooming and protect children from harmful content.

For the most serious breaches of the Online Safety Act, penalties can reach 10% of a company's qualifying worldwide revenue.

Australia has gone further still.

Since 10 December 2025, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X, Snapchat and several other platforms have been required to take reasonable steps to prevent Australians under 16 from having accounts.

The penalty can reach A$54.6 million.

European lawsuits are emerging too

The US model is slowly making its way to Europe as well.

In Italy, families and organisations representing children are pursuing proceedings against Meta and TikTok over issues including age verification and algorithms.

In a separate case, an Italian mother sued Meta and TikTok after her twelve-year-old daughter's death, alleging that algorithmic recommendations exposed the child to self-harm material.

These remain claimants' allegations, not established facts — Meta and TikTok dispute them.

Similar cases concerning children's safety, addictive service design and harmful recommendations are also emerging in France, Germany and the Netherlands.

Will this be “Big Tobacco 2.0”?

Comparisons with the tobacco industry are becoming more common.

They are tempting.

States versus enormous corporations.

Public-health allegations.

Internal documents.

Settlements worth billions.

Product changes forced by litigation as well as legislation.

US attorneys general themselves describe the Meta agreement as one of the largest state consumer settlements since the tobacco-industry settlements.

But I would not take the comparison too far.

Nicotine is a specific substance with a well-understood mechanism of action.

Social media is communication, entertainment, communities, news, business, education and fifteen other things at once.

So we cannot honestly write:

Instagram is the new cigarette.

We can, however, say something else.

App design mechanisms are no longer being treated as a neutral technical layer.

If an app analyses a user's behaviour, chooses their next content, sends notifications at particular times and optimises every part of the interface for time spent in the product, it becomes increasingly hard to argue that its creator is responsible only for keeping the server running.

Rather than for how that product was designed.

That may be the most interesting change

$942 million in New Mexico sounds spectacular.

$17 billion sounds even better.

$18 billion makes the best headline.

But Meta generated more than $60 billion in revenue in the second quarter of 2026 alone.

This company will survive a financial penalty.

Something else is far more interesting.

The New Mexico court ordered product changes.

The settlement with most states requires product changes.

Australia is changing the rules for access to the product.

The UK demands more effective age verification.

The European Union is checking whether the current safeguards meet legal requirements at all.

Will all these measures work?

We do not know.

Will children stop bypassing age restrictions?

Probably not.

Will increasingly thorough age verification raise privacy problems?

Almost certainly.

But for the first time in a long while, the question is no longer just:

“how should parents keep their children safe online?”

Increasingly, it is:

“why was a product available to children designed this way?”

For technology companies, that second question could prove far more expensive.