Education leaders react to $17B Meta settlement

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(The Center Square) – Education leaders and lawmakers are weighing in after a bipartisan coalition of 47 state attorneys general announced a $17 billion settlement with Meta Platforms Inc., over allegations that the company harmed children and teens through its social media platforms.

The lawsuit was filed in 2023. The state attorneys general argued that Meta designed addictive, harmful features on Instagram and Facebook that drive excessive youth use, leading to severe mental and physical harm, collected data from children under 13 and misled the public about platform safety, The Center Square previously reported.

“Meta knows that it continues to harm young users because Meta’s design features have clear and well-documented harms to young users,” the lawsuit said. 

The Center Square also reported that Illinois’ share of the settlement is expected to total $768 million. The state gets to choose how to use the funds, but the Illinois Federation of Teachers said the new funds could fund a statewide education gap, which has been a focus of state lawmakers and the governor. 

Sophia Lorey, outreach director for the California Family Council, said the settlement demonstrates that technology companies have the ability to verify users’ ages and argued that stronger age enforcement is necessary to protect children online.

“We believe age enforcement is feasible to protect students, and Meta just proved it. These companies can tell an advertiser your age, your income, and what you bought last Tuesday, so they can determine whether a user is 13," Lorey told The Center Square. "There is nothing free about a market where a corporation signs up your 12-year-old behind your back, sells their data, and designs the product to be addictive. That is not liberty. That is a company monetizing a child without even necessarily the knowledge of a parent. Conservatives who care about parental authority and protecting children should be the loudest voices in this fight."

California Assemblymember Dawn Addis, D-San Luis Obispo, who serves on the California State Assembly Education Committee, told The Center Square that the settlement is a positive step but argued that additional legislation is needed to address children's mental health, safety and privacy.

“Big Tech has raked in record profits while knowingly harming our children for far too long. This settlement is a step in the right direction, but is not the final solution. We continue to need stronger guardrails in statute that will protect our children’s mental health, safety, and personal information,“ Addis told The Center Square. 

Some education leaders, though, question whether Meta, under the settlement, will actually be able to verify ages, which raises new privacy concerns.

Dr. Raffaele Ciriello, senior lecturer in business information systems at the University of Sydney, argued that settlements targeting individual companies do not address the broader business model behind social media platforms.

“[S]tronger age assurance is feasible, but at the risk of legally entrenching child surveillance in Meta’s business model. The settlement gives Meta a lasting carve-out from state COPPA-style claims for retaining and using children’s data to train its age-assurance systems. The headline $18 billion may sound like a lot, but it is spread over 10 years and amounts to less than 1% of Meta’s annual revenue,” Ciriello told The Center Square. 

The new restrictions could have significant implications on how teenagers use social media during the school day, according to Dr. Rob Nicholls, a senior research associate at the University of Sydney’s Centre for AI, Trust and Governance.

Nicholls told The Center Square that the enforcement mechanism carries serious consequences for Meta and its executives because violating the consent judgment could constitute contempt of court. “The risk is that senior managers could be jailed for the breach."

Nicholls said the biggest educational effect of the Meta restrictions could be the change in how social media operates during school hours.

“I think that the key educational impact will be the way that Meta platforms will work in school hours,” he said. “This will have a significant impact on the way that teens consume social media.”

But he cautioned that limiting social media during the school day may not address the broader harms associated with teenagers’ use of the platforms.

“The Australian experience from school bans is that social media harms occur outside of the time when schools act in loco parentis (in the place of a parent),” Nicholls said.

Dr. Joanne Gray, chair of discipline, media and communications at the University of Sydney, said the settlement represents progress but said its effectiveness will depend on how Meta implements the changes and whether researchers can independently evaluate them. 

“I think this is a positive development, and I hope the agreed changes are implemented in good faith by Meta,” Gray told The Center Square. “How well they work remains to be seen - and requires Meta to make future data available for research and independent evaluation.”  

“But we also need to do more to address the systemic causes and incentives driving the social media economy. Notifications can be ignored, limits can be circumvented, and parents often do not have the time, capacity or knowledge to constantly manage all the devices and apps their children use," Gray added. "More importantly, the burden shouldn’t be on individuals and families to protect themselves from known harms. It should be on companies to design and operate their products in ways that prevent those harms in the first place."

The suit against Meta was co-led by California, Colorado, New Jersey and Kentucky.