The Tide Is Beginning To Turn - The Meta $17 Billion Settlement Is A Watershed Victory For Children And Parents

“Just like the lawsuits against Big Tobacco, Meta’s settlement with 47+ state AGs is the biggest Big Tech settlement in history and conveys that there’s a very high price to pay by Big Tech for knowingly harming children on their platforms. We applaud the state attorneys general for their leadership in fighting to defend the safety and innocence of children online,” said Donna Rice Hughes, President and CEO, Enough Is Enough.



“The tide began to turn with the earlier California and New Mexico decisions making it abundantly clear to Meta that the evidence of harm to children was stacked against the company and so it rightly decided to settle. Meta could have avoided this altogether by prioritizing safety over profits as best practices which would have been a win-win for both children and Meta’s bottom line. The settlement requires Meta to add child-safety measures onto Facebook and Instagram, including daily time limits for kids; Night mode, which prevents kids from using the apps; Preventing notifications during the school day; Reminders every 15 minutes to take a break; No beauty filters. Additionally, parents and kids can disable algorithmic feeds and autoplay features and use stronger parental controls to better lock down the app for parents.These are positive steps, however, the settlement does not require Meta to turn off by default algorithms that connect kids to predators that often lead youth down dangerous black holes. Nor does it require critical age verification technologies to keep kids under 13 years old off their platforms,” said Donna Rice Hughes, President and CEO, Enough Is Enough.

“That said, kids are still not safe online. The settlement rightly raises the bar for new and critical child safety features the rest of the industry should also implement to help ensure kids are safer online. It will take a combination of Big Tech prioritizing safety over profit, legislative action, and continued parental involvement to protect children online. According to Issue One, Big Tech spends an average of $230,000 per day lobbying the federal government against passing laws that would hold Big Tech responsible for prioritizing child safety over their rush to market and profits. Hopefully, this settlement will end the lobbying to protect Big Tech and instead focus on protecting kids. The Senate must prioritize passing the bi-partisan Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) with its strong Duty of Care that will better ensure Big Tech industry wide standards to design their products with child safety in mind and deliver stronger protections for children; Additionally, Congress should swiftly pass the App Store Accountability Act to empower parents to make sure that parents themselves get to decide first what if any any social media, AI chatbots, gaming apps they want their children to have,” Hughes said.

Parents and educators can find key information at EIE’s new InternetSafety101.org site, a comprehensive one-stop shop that brings together new and updated guidance on social media, gaming, AI, cyberbullying, pornography, trafficking, cybersecurity, and online exploitation, along with practical tools like tips, checklists, and Parent Quick Guides.

Enough Is Enough is a National, Non-Partisan, Non-Profit Organization that has led the fight to make the Internet safer for children and families since 1994. EIE's efforts are focused on combating internet pornography, child sexual abuse material, sexual predation, sex trafficking and cyberbullying by incorporating a four-pronged prevention strategy with shared responsibilities between the public, corporate America, government and the faith community.