What's in the Meta Settlement Over Child Safety

**Brian Lehrer** (0:10)
It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC, good morning everyone. So let's see what you think about the new rules that Facebook and Instagram just agreed to live by. We'll open our lines right from the start for calls and texts from parents, teachers, teen and young adult users, anybody else who thinks you're relevant.
212-433-WNYC, call or text, 212-433-9692.
You've probably heard the headline by now. Meta, owned by Mark Zuckerberg, reached an out of court settlement yesterday in a lawsuit that sought more than a trillion dollars in damages and new ways to curb youth and teenage addiction to Meta social media platforms and the subsequent mental health problems that have become so widespread. The suit, brought by the states of New Jersey, California, Colorado and Kentucky, alleged that Instagram and Facebook in particular were purposely designed to get kids hooked and that the company purposely misled the public about it. The settlement was for only around 17 billion dollars. Sounds like a lot of money by itself, but it's a far cry from the 1.4 trillion demand. Meta stock went up on that news yesterday, not down. We'll explain who gets that money and for what. But the bigger deal here by all accounts is the changes the company agreed to for the platforms. As The Washington Post lists some of them, Facebook and Instagram will be blocked for young users from midnight to 6 a.m. Notifications will be turned off by default during school hours. Teens will only be able to use the apps for two hours a day, unless a verified parent, there's that term verified parent, turns off the control. Like counts on teen posts, viewing how many likes you got, will be turned off by default. Also, Meta agreed to use what they call age assurance technology to determine which of its users should be subject to the restrictions or are under 13 and are too young to be on its platforms at all. What's more, the Post reports, the settlement includes unusual terms designed to convince other tech firms to agree to sharp limits on teens' use of their platforms. We'll get into how that might work. ABC News adds these to the list. Teens will get more reminders to stop scrolling. Meta will begin prompting teens after every 15 minutes of continuous screen time. Additional reminders will appear when their combined daily Instagram and Facebook usage reaches 60 minutes and again at 90 minutes. Also, parents can require a non-algorithmic feed. That is, teens will have the option to make a non-personalized feed their default, meaning Meta's recommendation systems won't determine what content is served to them as individuals and parents will be able to require their teen to use the non-algorithmic setting.
ABC notes, however, that there are exceptions to some of these guardrails, like the teens could still receive notifications for direct messages. I guess that means from people they know. So how's this going over? Well, New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport was ecstatic yesterday on ABC News when asked why she settled rather than taking the case to trial.

**Jennifer Davenport** (3:40)
I am so pleased to announce this landmark settlement with Meta, and it's really a consent agreement showing that they are accountable and they have to pay an historic amount of money, up to $17.1 billion nationally and up to at least $525 million for New Jersey.
More important than that, these safety features that they've agreed to implement on Instagram, on Facebook, because let's think about it. Why we have been working on this case for five years. We've been doing it to protect our kids, and every day we think about different ways to protect our kids, and we know the harms of social media. The injunctive relief that we're able to achieve with this settlement is not something that any court has ever ordered.

**Brian Lehrer** (4:29)
Not something that any court has ever ordered, remember that phrase, we'll come back to it. New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport. So, parents, teachers, teen and young adult users, what do you think? Are you as enthusiastic as New Jersey's AG 212433, WNYC 2124339692 call or text? Will this help you protect your kids, parents from the mental health risks of social media a lot, a little, not much at all, in your opinion? Will kids just find their way around these restrictions? It wouldn't be the first time that happened, right? Will the new guardrails actually reduce the amount of teen anxiety and depression?
The real goals here in the United States, 212433WNYC, call or text 2124339692
And you can also ask questions about the agreement for our guest, who's going to help explain it in more detail now. It's Gerrit De Vynck, tech reporter for The Washington Post, based in San Francisco. The trial was taking place on his home turf in Oakland. Gerrit, thanks so much for getting up way too early Pacific time for this. Welcome to WNYC.