I’ve been on Meta platforms ever since I can remember. I made my Facebook account on the family PC aged 10 and downloaded Instagram at the age of 12 on my iPhone 3GS. As a gen Z-er, I’m part of the guinea-pig generation who grew up online, and the trillion-dollar company has had more of an influence on my life than a lot of my family members. But since losing a loved one to online harms in 2022, I’ve witnessed firsthand the most devastating impacts of unregulated social media.
That’s why following developments in the historic 29-state lawsuit in the US against Meta has been bittersweet. This week, in an agreement with 52 US attorneys general, the company agreed to settle, with an $18bn payout over 10 years. The lawsuit alleged that Meta designed features to exploit vulnerabilities associated with adolescent development and maximise time spent on the app, as well as concealing risks to young people and collecting children’s data in violation of privacy laws. To add insult to injury, Meta does not have to admit guilt as part of the settlement agreement.
In a historic first, the company is being forced to change its design features. The lawsuit marks a defining shift; many are calling it the industry’s Big Tobacco moment, with social media platforms at last being held to account for the addictive health risks that their products pose to us all, and especially to young people. But I believe this is just the beginning, and, in fact, doesn’t go far enough to make up for the catastrophic harm Meta has wreaked on my generation’s wellbeing.
No industry has ever had such intimate access to children’s inner worlds and been able to manipulate them inside the four walls of their own bedrooms
Paid over a decade in annual instalments that make up less than 1% of its annual revenue, the settlement will barely make a dent on the company. It’s a drop in the ocean compared with the potential $1.4 trillion damages award its PR team warned the company might be facing. If Meta had gone through the entire court case, it could have been wiped out altogether.
$18bn sounds like a lot, but there’s no amount that can ever compensate for destroying an entire generation's sense of self. I speak for a generation whose emotional wellbeing and mental health has been treated as a commodity to be profited from. No industry has ever had such intimate access to children’s inner worlds and been able to manipulate them inside the four walls of their own bedrooms.
Meta will have to make US-wide design changes, including curbing infinite scroll and autoplay, adopting a two-hour limit that only parents can remove and offering an optional non-algorithmic feed. Safety by design on social media is what campaigners like me have been calling for for years, but it has to be a global change. We cannot afford to have platforms that are safe in some countries and not all. A whack-a-mole approach to product safety regulation is simply not acceptable when young people’s lives are at stake. We’ve seen this fail when it comes to social media bans: 81% of Australian teenagers can still access social media despite that country’s ban.
This has also come too late for many parents like mine, who have already lost loved ones, helplessly seen their children sink down the rabbit hole, and fought desperate battles in private to keep their kids safe. But what the case does do is open up a can of worms for Meta, and I imagine Mark Zuckerberg is squirming right now.
It is undeniable that this lawsuit will shape the course of Big Tech’s future, and that the growing support for stronger regulation is forcing politicians of all persuasions to recognise that their constituents care about this issue deeply. In the UK, we have an ineffective regulator and an Online Safety Act full of loopholes, and Andy Burnham is yet to take a clear stand against Silicon Valley.
But I am taking hope from the fact that Meta’s arguments and denials have finally fallen flat, and that there is now no turning back for a tech broligarchy that has self-governed for far too long. This case sets a precedent for governments across the globe to finally hit social media giants with the legal accountability they deserve, finally force them to implement safety by design for all, and, most importantly, fix the problem of online harm at the root.
Adele Walton is a journalist and online safety campaigner. She is the author of Logging Off: the Human Cost of our Digital World and co-founder of Logging Off Club