Mississippi will receive $189 million over 10 years as a result of a settlement announced on Wednesday between technology giant Meta and 47 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories that sued claiming the company’s social media platforms harmed children.
The agreement nationwide comes out to $17.1 billion, the largest settlement ever paid by a social media company to states. Mississippi’s share of the payout was announced by Attorney General Lynn Fitch, who said Meta is setting a new standard for the way children engage with social media.
“Big Tech has been conducting a social experiment on our children’s developing brains by making platforms that were purposefully addictive and preyed on children’s greatest vulnerabilities,” Fitch said in a statement. “A generation of children have suffered, but with this settlement we spark transformational changes to protect children from harm.”
The settlement was reached after a bipartisan, nationwide investigation that nearly every attorney general in the country participated in, starting in 2021. The investigation found that Meta designed Instagram’s features to addict children, documented the resulting mental health harm and showed how the company failed to warn parents, Fitch said.
In 2023, states around the country, including Mississippi, began filing parallel lawsuits and joint federal complaints. This settlement resolves those cases, Fitch said.
Legal experts said the settlement could be a watershed moment for the social media industry, which has largely escaped regulation in response to how its platforms could harm children.
Under the settlement, Meta will be required to institute a series of safety features on Instagram and Facebook, including daily time limits on platform use by children, blocks restricting children’s access during school hours, age verification and a range of content control.
States could receive more money if other platforms agree to similar settlements. Meta will initially pay about $12 billion, but it will pay an additional $5 billion if fellow tech companies Snap, TikTok and YouTube also agree to financial penalties and changes to make the platforms safer for children. If that happens, Mississippi could receive $270 million over 10 years, Fitch said.
Meta’s legal team said on Wednesday that the company negotiated the terms of its settlement to require the other companies to join Meta in developing industry standards, the New York Times reported.
Michelle Williams, Fitch’s chief of staff, said Mississippi will next month file a consent decree in Hinds County Circuit Court, where the state lawsuit played out. That filing will contain more information on how the money will be spent in Mississippi.
Compared to other federal settlements such as the one that mandated spending to fight opioid addiction, the Meta settlement gives Mississippi more leeway on how it chooses to spend the money, Williams said. But the settlement does include guidance that the money should be spent on youth mental health and similar initiatives.
Fitch filed a similar suit against TikTok, and litigation in that case is ongoing.
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