Meta has reached a settlement in a lawsuit concerning the negative impact of Facebook and Instagram on minors. The company will pay up to $18 billion (8.284 trillion tenge) and introduce new restrictions for teenagers, according to infohub.kz.
The lawsuit was filed by attorneys general from 29 U.S. states, accusing the corporation of designing its platforms to maximize the attention of children and teenagers.
Meta does not admit wrongdoing but has agreed to pay states up to $16.7 billion. An additional $459 million will go toward resolving privacy-related claims, and $1 billion will be paid to Texas in a separate case. In total, this amounts to about $18 billion.
Beyond financial obligations, Meta must change Facebook and Instagram features for teenagers. Specifically, access to the platforms will be restricted from midnight to 6 a.m., a daily limit of two hours will be set, and notifications will be disabled during school hours.
Additionally, the apps will remind young users to take a break after 15 minutes of continuous use. They will also no longer see the number of likes on their posts.
Meta plans to pay 70% of the amount within the next ten years. The remaining portion will be paid if TikTok and YouTube introduce similar restrictions for minors.
For Meta, the $18 billion payout is significant but not critical. In the second quarter of 2026, the company reported revenue of $60.8 billion, and for the full year 2025, its revenue exceeded $200 billion.
It is worth recalling that Kazakhstan recently proposed banning social media registration for users under 16. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev called for stronger content filtering to protect children from harmful information.
Earlier, Kursiv LifeStyle reported that a U.S. court heard a case about social media addiction. The jury ordered Meta and Google to pay $6 million to a 20-year-old woman who claimed she became addicted to Instagram and YouTube as a child.