The next Big Tobacco? Utah leaders celebrate 'watershed' Meta settlement

SALT LAKE CITY — A three-year fight against large social media companies culminated in what Utah leaders are calling a major victory for the state, after Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion and add child safety features to its platforms to settle a 47-state lawsuit.

The Beehive State looks to receive $212 million of that settlement total over the next decade, and could receive "up to $301 million if industry leaders similarly settle," according to the governor's office.

"Utah changed the course of history with these big tech companies and holding them accountable," Gov. Spencer Cox told KSL in an interview, "and I'm so grateful that we were able to be a part of that."

But the money is only the icing on the cake, said Attorney General Derek Brown, whose office has been helping to sue the owner of Facebook and Instagram since 2023 over claims the platforms' design features were addictive and harmed the mental health of children and teens.

Brown called this a "generational settlement."

"I know a lot of people are talking about the money," he told KSL's "Inside Sources" on Wednesday morning. "I'll be honest, this was never about the money. This was always about forcing the industry to make changes."

What the settlement means

Those changes include some of the design changes for young users Utah policymakers have tried for years to influence, including a two-hour combined daily time limit across Instagram and Facebook, blocked access to the apps from midnight to 6 a.m., no push notifications to children during the school day and an option for a non-personalized algorithmic feed for minors, according to Utah's Division of Consumer Protection.

But despite those and other changes to parental controls for young users, Utah's Department of Commerce commissioner said parents should still keep a close eye on their kids' social media use.

"They just have a lot more tools to be able to be more vigilant, and the default settings, which is crucial, will be much more in favor of protecting kids," Margaret Woolley Busse told "Inside Sources." "It's clear that Meta could have done this all along, right? They have the ability to do age assurance. They have the ability to implement these features and they have chosen not to because of profits."

Cox, who led out in early 2023 in calling for social media regulations and lawsuits, said he feels "vindicated."

"These companies could have done this on their own 10 years ago, five years ago, three years ago when we brought the lawsuits," he said. "Instead, they tied us up in court so we couldn't implement the things that we were trying to do, and then they finally came to the table and agreed that it needed to be done, so feel more than vindicated."

Meta announced the settlement in a blog post Wednesday, noting that it rolled out accounts for teenagers with automatic protections in 2024.

"Ensuring teens have a safe and productive experience on our platforms is an absolute imperative for Meta," the company wrote. "We want to get this right for parents and teens, and that's why we partnered with state attorneys general to set a new industry standard."

The company also called on the owners of two other major social media platforms, YouTube and TikTok, to adopt the same safety measures. Seventy percent of the money will be paid annually over the next 10 years, while the remainder is contingent upon YouTube and TikTok implementing a one-hour time limit, "night mode" and age assurance measures, and on those companies together matching 30% of the total settlement price.

Utah's share of the settlement will likely go to help children suffering with mental health issues and to educate parents and families about the "harms of social media," according to Woolley Busse, who said the state still has "a lot of work to do to determine" the specifics.

Emily Bell McCormick, the president of the Policy Project, which has promoted recent legislation to limit phone use during school, said social media use is a "collective action" problem that is difficult for any single parent or family to regulate.

"It is something that is so much bigger than any one family," she told KSL. "The outcome of this lawsuit has been a really good move in helping kids get their childhood back. ... In this case, it needed to be all of the adults acting together, saying this is not good for society and this isn't going anywhere good in the future. We need to stop this."

Utah's fight against social media

State leaders have pursued a dual strategy against social media platforms through the courts and through legislation. The Legislature first passed social media regulations in 2023, but those have been the subject of litigation from industry groups that claimed the laws violated their First Amendment rights.

Brown said Wednesday's settlement is significant in that it requires Meta to enact stronger guardrails around harmful content, something that may have been difficult to enact via legislation. He compared it to the settlement reached with major tobacco companies in 1998, which changed how companies can market tobacco products and sent billions to states to cover medical expenses incurred because of smoking.

"This is the single biggest settlement really in history after that case," he said. "This is about forcing an industry whose entire platform was based on maximizing engagement, maximizing eyeballs, forcing kids to stare at their screens for as long as possible, and we've now severed that connection, and this is one of those watershed moments."

Cox, who has also invoked the large tobacco companies in comparison to social media giants, said Utah got most, if not all, of what it wanted.

"That's the nature of settlement," he said. "It's huge in holding social media companies accountable, actually changing the platforms to protect kids, and then getting some financial compensation that we can use to help mitigate the harms that they've caused over the past decade."

State Rep. Jordan Teuscher, R-South Jordan, one of the lawmakers who sponsored some of the bills regulating social media, called the settlement a "major milestone."

"I am proud that Utah has been at the tip of the spear on this issue," he wrote on social media.

What's next?

The settlement still needs to be approved by a judge, but top state leaders are already hopeful it will set a standard for other social media platforms and new technologies to follow.

"I believe other tech companies who have always had those same market incentives to now shift and focus instead (of) on engagement, they're going to be focused on how do we protect kids," Brown said.

McCormick said she's hopeful the settlement represents a "turning point" in social media use and in the quality of content children and teens encounter online.

"I have kids who are teenagers, and frankly, it's been an extremely challenging generation just because the pacing of the development of technology has been so insanely fast that we as humans have not caught up with how to best monitor and deal with it," she said. "I think this moment should be celebrated as something hopeful, like we're coming to consensus."

Cox said Utah is eying the companies behind popular artificial intelligence chatbots and online gambling markets for potential harms.

"We're watching very closely, and if they follow the same platform as Meta, as Tiktok, as Google, we'll come for them too, and we'll come a lot quicker than we did this time," he said.

Contributing: Daniel Woodruff

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