Attorney General Todd Rokita announces largest Big Tech settlement in Indiana and nation’s history to protect young Hoosiers from social media harms

Attorney General Todd Rokita and his team actively participated in a multi-state lawsuit that will deliver a guaranteed $296 million — and up to $419.4 million — to Indiana as part of a landmark $17.1 billion settlement with Meta Platforms, Inc. The settlement resolves allegations that the company knowingly designed and deployed harmful features on its social media platforms intended to addict children and teens, as well as claims by 47 states and four territories.

Today, Attorney General Rokita submitted the settlement agreement in Indiana’s joint lawsuit against Meta in the Northern District of California. Subject to the Court’s approval, a consent judgment will be entered, delivering this historic result.

“This settlement is a milestone victory for Hoosier families,” said Attorney General Rokita. “For years, Meta prioritized engagement and profits over the mental health and well-being of our children. Today, we are securing both meaningful accountability and concrete changes that will help protect the next generation. Parents will finally have stronger tools, including opting their teens out of algorithm-driven scrolling designed to keep them hooked.”

This marks one of the largest state consumer protection settlements in history outside the Big Tobacco settlements of the 1990s. In addition to the payment, Meta must implement a sweeping set of safety features designed to protect children on Instagram and Facebook.

Beginning in 2021, nearly every attorney general in the country cooperated to investigate the social media industry for designing and promoting platforms to children and teens despite known harms. After a bipartisan nationwide investigation found that Meta designed Instagram’s features to addict children — while internally documenting the resulting mental health harms and failing to warn parents — attorneys general across the country sued the company. At that time, Meta falsely assured the public that these features were safe and suitable for young users. 

The agreement requires Meta to implement robust, ongoing changes to Facebook and Instagram to protect teens in states that join the settlement.

Key provisions include:

• Hard cap daily time limits and “Productive Pauses” for children: For its two platforms, Instagram and Facebook, a combined two-hour daily time limit with mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use and again at 60 and 90 minutes to interrupt endless scrolling.  These limits remain in effect for five years. If Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube adopt comparable terms, the daily limit on each platform will drop to 60 minutes for 10 years;
• “Nighttime blocks” restricting children’s access from 12:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.;
• Limited school-time access for children, eliminating push notifications on weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. during the school year;
• Robust age assurance measures to more effectively verify the age of young users;
• Safer, age-appropriate content controls, including stronger safeguards against bullying, content promoting eating disorders, and content related to suicide and self-harm;
• Stronger, more user-friendly parental controls;
• Limits on social comparison features, including beauty filters and visible “like” counts, that have been linked to poor mental health outcomes in kids and teens; and
• Both the implementation and efficacy of the features will be regularly assessed by an independent auditor and the settling states.

These are groundbreaking changes — more significant and comprehensive than any court has previously ordered. They are designed to reduce compulsive use, mitigate risks of anxiety, depression, disordered eating, sleep disruption, and other documented harms, and give parents greater ability to supervise their children’s online activity.

Attorney General Rokita said the settlement equips Indiana to confront the documented harms these platforms inflicted on children and young adults, giving the state resources to support affected Hoosier families while continuing to partner with other states on lasting protections.

“This is not just about money — it’s about changing how these platforms operate so they stop exploiting the developing brains of our kids,” Attorney General Rokita said. “Indiana will continue working with other states to secure similar protections from companies like Discord, Roblox, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube. Our children deserve better, and we will keep fighting until they get it.”

Attorney General Rokita is particularly thankful for the work of his Consumer Protection Division on this case, specifically Chief Counsel and Director of Consumer Protection Scott Barnhart; Section Chief of Consumer Litigation Corinne Gilchrist; and Deputy Attorney General Mark Snodgrass.

The settlement also resolves the states’ claims against Meta for its sharing of nonpublic information about Facebook users with third parties, like Cambridge Analytica, leading up to the 2016 election.