The $1 trillion Meta trial that wasn’t

TL;DR: Yesterday, Meta settled a landmark trial around teen social media addiction—and it might be popping champagne right about now. The settlement lets Meta avoid a drastic redesign of its apps and could potentially give it an edge over rivals. The cherry on top: Meta gets to paint itself as an industry leader on protecting kids—while pushing much of the onus onto parents.

What happened: Perhaps the biggest sign that this was a positive outcome for Meta: Its stock immediately rallied after the news broke. The social media giant has agreed to pay about $12.7 billion to the 47 states that joined the settlement agreement (plus a separate $1 billion payment to Texas)—and could cough up about $5 billion more if TikTok, YouTube, and Snap agree to some of the safety measures Meta will now be bound to.

Whichever amount it ends up paying is just a tiny slice of the company’s annual profit last year ($60.4 billion)—and it’ll be paid over 10 years. Reminder: Meta was telling the world that states were seeking as much as $1.4 trillion—an amount that’s a whole lot more than $18 billion, but would have been ruinous for the company considering its market cap is…$1.4 trillion. (Though it still faces other litigation around teen safety.)

Meanwhile, even the restrictions Meta agreed to implement don’t go far enough, critics say. And the big elephant in the room: If teen social media bans around the world are any indication, underage users might figure out ways to swerve these restrictions anyway.

Limits (with caveats): Many of the new safety measures focus on time limits. By default, users under 18 in the US will be blocked from using Meta’s social apps at night and be limited to two hours of scrolling per day. But features like autoplay and algorithmic feeds won’t be disabled by default, though they can be turned off. (There’s also a grab bag of exceptions, like DMs and long-form content—anything of at least 22 minutes—being excluded from the daily use limits.) Parents can also lift or tweak many of these settings.

A big W for Meta?: Crucially, if YouTube, TikTok, and Snap agree to similar restrictions, Meta will set the daily time limit for under 18s in the US to just one hour. The average American teen browses Instagram for about 66 minutes per day, per Meta—lower than what they spend on YouTube (almost two hours) and TikTok (about an hour and a half)—so this would mark a huge win for Zuck’s company.

Bottom line: If Meta can pressure its competitors to adopt comparable measures, it’ll essentially give up six minutes of screen time per user while they lose up to an hour—and it gets to make off looking like the good guy. —WK