Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti announced Wednesday a landmark $17.1 billion multistate settlement with Meta Platforms, Inc., bringing an end to Tennessee’s lawsuit against the company over allegations that Instagram was designed to encourage addictive use among children and teens.
The settlement, described by Skrmetti’s office as the largest Big Tech settlement in history, requires Meta to pay $17.1 billion and implement sweeping new safety measures on Instagram and Facebook aimed at protecting young users.
🚨BIG WIN FOR TENNESSEE FAMILIES🚨
We took on one of the biggest tech companies in the world, and today, we’re holding Meta accountable.
Tennessee led 47 states and D.C., Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands in a historic settlement over the impact of… pic.twitter.com/NDfn74IaT6
— TN Attorney General (@AGTennessee) August 26, 2026
Tennessee is set to receive almost $752 million from the agreement, which Skrmetti said will be directed to the state’s newly created Children’s Digital Protection Fund to support efforts to protect and restore the mental health and safety of Tennessee children.
“We took Meta to trial because Instagram was hurting kids and misleading parents,” Skrmetti said in a statement. “Now we’re ending the trial with a settlement that imposes unprecedented protections for kids and delivers record-setting money for Tennessee’s Children’s Digital Protection Fund.”
The settlement resolves claims brought by 47 states and several U.S. territories alleging Meta designed Instagram with addictive features, knowingly exposed young users to serious mental harms, and misled the public about the safety of its platforms.
The agreement comes just weeks after Tennessee began its trial against Meta in Davidson County Chancery Court. The lawsuit, filed by Skrmetti in October 2023, alleged that Meta deliberately engineered Instagram to maximize engagement among young users while concealing risks associated with the platform.
Skrmetti previously identified the lawsuit as a top priority and told The Tennessee Star’s CEO and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy in April that his office had assembled a specialized trial team to take on Meta.
“They have optimized their product over decades using neuroscientists and casino designers and A/B testing on the big scale level,” Skrmetti said at the time, arguing that Meta could make its products safer for children.
Under the settlement unveiled on Wednesday, Instagram and Facebook will impose a combined daily limit of two hours for young users, with mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use and again at 60 and 90 minutes. The limits will remain in place for five years.
The platforms will also restrict young users’ access between midnight and 6 a.m., eliminate weekday push notifications from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. during the school year, strengthen age verification and parental controls, and impose additional safeguards involving bullying, eating disorders, suicide, and self-harm content.
The agreement will also limit certain social-comparison features for young users, including beauty filters and visible “like” counts.
“This is a generational win for our state and for our kids,” Skrmetti said.
The settlement follows a nationwide investigation that began in 2021 involving attorneys general from across the country. Skrmetti said Tennessee’s case, along with related federal litigation, helped spur negotiations that ultimately produced the agreement.
Skrmetti also said the settlement should serve as a first step toward broader federal regulation of technology companies that interact with children, while calling for Congress to establish a federal duty of care for platforms serving young users.
“This settlement is the best possible solution we could get through litigation, and it delivers serious accountability with both comprehensive injunctive terms and record-setting money. But in the long run, we need federal legislation that clearly imposes a duty of care on every tech company that interacts with kids,” he said.
While Meta welcomed the agreement as a new standard for teen safety, it called on TikTok and YouTube to adopt the same protections, arguing that teens move between multiple platforms.
“Because teens move fluidly across dozens of apps, we need an industry-wide solution. We therefore call on our industry peers, TikTok and YouTube, to implement this new framework, right away,” Meta Chief Legal Officer C.J. Mahoney said.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
