Meta’s settlement involves significant changes, but what about First Amendment implications?
By Evan Ringel
Entrance sign at Meta’s corporate headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Photo by Nokia621 licensed under
CC BY-SA 4.0)
In late August, Meta (the parent company of social media networks Facebook and Instagram) announced a landmark multistate settlement, agreeing to pay up to $17.1 billion to resolve claims that the company had endangered teens by intentionally creating and implementing addictive design features.
The settlement followed increasing pressure from legislators and the public to crack down on the company’s questionable design practices. In 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported that an internal Facebook team had found that more than 10% of users of the platform reported “compulsive use” that affected their sleep, work, or relationships with family and friends. Facebook would later shut down the research team responsible for the report.
At the federal level, the bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) has received broad support from legislators but has bounced between the House and Senate without passage. This has left state legislatures and attorneys general as the primary actors pursuing regulation and enforcement to hold social media companies accountable, which they have done through laws requiring age verification, cyberbullying resources, warning labels, or other procedural methods.
In the litigation that ultimately led to the August settlement, 47 U.S. states and the District of Columbia pursued legal action against Meta as a consumer protection issue, drawing comparisons to the multistate litigation efforts to regulate Big Tobacco in the 1990s. However, though many have praised Meta’s settlement as an important step in teen safety and online accountability, the August agreement is significantly more complex from a First Amendment perspective than the 1998 tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.
In addition to the financial agreement, Meta agreed to implement several safety features intended to protect teens, including:
Daily time limits for teen users (2 hours, with mandatory pauses after 15, 60, and 90 minutes)
Age verification procedures
Limitations on notifications during school hours or overnight
Expanded parental controls
Age-appropriate content controls
From a First Amendment standpoint, laws can often be sorted into two categories: (1) those that target speech, which bear some sort of First Amendment interest; and (2) those that target conduct, which bear either a lesser First Amendment interest or no speech-related constitutional protection at all. The safety features required in the Meta settlement don’t really fall neatly into either one. Though each product design requirement may not directly limit content, the age-appropriate content restrictions certainly do, and other proposed features may functionally limit content as well.
Meta could have voluntarily chosen to implement these safety features had it wished to do so. As a private company, Meta is free to take actions restricting user speech because the speech protection enshrined in the First Amendment applies only to state action.
It is also likely that if Meta had been required to implement these safety features through federal or state legislation (a form of state action), some of the requirements would likely have run afoul of the First Amendment. Courts apply strict scrutiny when speech is regulated based on its content, and these restrictions on speech would be presumptively unconstitutional unless the government can show that a compelling state interest was addressed in the least speech-restrictive way possible.
For the sake of discussion, let’s hypothetically approach the Meta settlement as if its requirements had been imposed by legislation.
There are two different sets of First Amendment rights at play. First, Meta has First Amendment rights in how it selects, organizes, and moderates third-party posts. In the Supreme Court’s 2024 Moody v. NetChoice decision, the majority reiterated that choices social media platforms make about which content to show users “give [them] a particular expressive quality and constitute the exercise of protected editorial control.” Any requirements that dictate what content social media platforms can show to their users may violate the platform’s First Amendment rights.
In addition, teen users have their own First Amendment rights. Age verification measures remain hotly debated. While the Supreme Court upheld a Texas law requiring age verification in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton (2025), that decision extended only to websites publishing sexually explicit content that would be “obscene to minors.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation has argued that a broader government-mandated implementation of age verification laws would be unconstitutional, pointing to multiple lower court decisions that have struck down similar laws on First Amendment grounds. Limiting or prohibiting access to social media platforms may have significant implications on teens’ ability to engage with political discourse, artistic expression, or supportive online communities. And age verification procedures may also have a chilling effect on adults who wish to access platforms but don’t wish to forfeit anonymity online.
Of course, Meta is not implementing these features as a result of legislation. In fact, Meta’s agreement with attorneys general expressly states that it was reached voluntarily and with counsel. However, the settlement functionally operates the same way that a piece of legislation would by imposing binding rules on Meta.
The Supreme Court has held that government entities cannot use pressure to coerce private parties to regulate speech in a way that the government itself would be unable to, a process known as “jawboning.” While it is unclear whether Meta’s willingness to accept government-backed restrictions on its own editorial choices would amount to jawboning, many First Amendment experts have expressed skepticism about whether Meta’s consent serves as a defense to jawboning arguments.
Of more concern, both Meta’s total payment and the robustness of the mandated safety features are contingent on whether TikTok and YouTube agree to enact similar safety procedures on their own platforms. If they do, Meta must pay an additional $5.1 billion and reduce the daily time limit for teen users. While that may seem like a disincentive for Meta, the company immediately issued an open letter calling on TikTok and YouTube to “join them in supporting teens.”
Meta has an obvious incentive to place pressure on its main rivals. By ensuring that YouTube and TikTok also impose similar use restrictions, the platform avoids placing itself at a competitive disadvantage. At the same time, that pressure further extends the reach of Meta’s negotiated settlement.
It also may increase government ability to enforce those measures through legal action. Meta’s settlement gives state attorneys general the ability to bring the company back to court if it fails to comply with the consent judgment.
To be clear, the Meta settlement may offer meaningful benefits. While it is unclear whether the proposed limitations on access will address concerns about mental health and youth social media addiction, most parties agree that there are substantive criticisms of how social media platforms (and Meta in particular) have prioritized profits at the expense of user well-being.
Ultimately, the First Amendment places significant limits on direct government regulation of online expression. This type of sweeping negotiated settlement could become an increasingly important mechanism for online governance, making the First Amendment implications even more concerning and worthy of discussion.
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Evan Ringel is an assistant professor of media law at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., and a member of the Overby Center panel of experts.
