On Aug. 26, the New Hampshire Department of Justice announced that the social media company Meta will pay the state up to approximately $224 million in a settlement that called for new restrictions for children on Instagram and Facebook, pending judicial approval. New Hampshire’s resolution is included in a $17.1 billion multi-state settlement with 48 states and territories, including N.H., and Washington D.C., Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to the Department’s press release.
New Hampshire was one of the only states that brought a lawsuit against Meta in its own state court; the Meta settlement resolves both the New Hampshire’s case and claims brought in the other settling states and territories, according to the Department’s press release.
In the N.H. case, state attorney general John Formella claimed that Meta’s platforms used “addictive features, knowingly exposed young users to serious mental harms and intentionally misled the public about the safety of its platforms.”
According to New Hampshire assistant attorney general Kevin Scura, the New Hampshire settlement is now awaiting approval of the New Hampshire state court.
Scura said in an interview with The Dartmouth that the settlement is “contingent” on the New Hampshire District court’s approval.
“If the settlement wasn’t approved by the court for New Hampshire, our case would just go back to … litigating,” Scura said.
If approved by the court, social media platforms would be required to implement safety features for minors including blocking both apps from midnight to 6 a.m., a two-hour daily time limit on the platforms and age restrictions, according to the press release.
“If the settlement wasn’t approved by the court for New Hampshire is that our case would just go back to it would be like the settlement wasn’t reached, and we’d go back to litigating,” Scura said.
A timeline for judicial approval has not yet been announced.
Seventy-percent of the state’s total settlement — approximately $153 million, to be paid by Meta — is “guaranteed” if the settlement is approved, according to Scura. Another $60 million relies on Snap, ByteDance and Google — the parent companies of Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube, respectively — agreeing to the settlement’s rules.
Scura explained that New Hampshire’s decision to file its own case separate from the multistate lawsuit was to ensure the state “maintain[ed] control.”
“There can be a lot of power in a lot of states joining together in one action, but it also means you surrender control to some extent to the group,” he said. “We wanted to be able to keep some amount of control over our case, to be able to move at our pace and to have these significant amounts of harm to New Hampshire teenagers be heard in New Hampshire courts.”
“A lot of people” will decide where the money goes, including “the legislature and the governor’s office and the state government as a whole,” Scura said.
“The hope and intention is to use this money to to help teens who have been affected by this, and to set up programs to reduce and ameliorate the effects that these platforms have had on teenagers,” he said.
Scura said that the “injunctive relief” was a main priority, adding that “none of it works without the age assurance.”
“Being able to get injunctive relief [on time limits, Night Mode and “age assurance”] was one of the goals that we set for this case and something that was really important to us,” Scura added.
Meta chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney wrote in an email statement to The Dartmouth that injunctive restrictions from the settlement “will empower parents to easily manage how their children access [their] platforms.”
“Our new time limit commitments, Night Mode features and usage limits during school hours set the right path forward for our whole industry, but this framework will only work if all our peers join us,” Mahoney wrote.
Mahoney added that addressing children’s social media use requires other social media platforms to take action as well.
“Because teens move fluidly across dozens of apps, we need an industry-wide solution,” he wrote. “We therefore call on our industry peers, TikTok and YouTube, to implement this new framework, right away.”
Geisel School of Medicine professor and child and adolescent psychiatrist Mitchell Cunningham said heavy social media use often creates “a cycle” in which the “people that are using it the most are also the people that are experiencing the most distress in their life.”
“It’s kind of an escape from what’s going on, and then all of the apps are designed to kind of maximize on that pain, and to kind of take the person’s attention and give them this feedback in different areas, so that they are kind of stuck then in that loop,” Cunningham said. “You’re able to be engaged and be entertained without putting anything at risk. If you go out and meet someone in person, you might say the wrong thing, or things could go wrong, and that kind of is life sometimes.”
Cunningham said “the bigger issue” is platforms’ algorithms, which are “designed to maximize the time that you are spending on something” by feeding users content that provokes a reaction.
“I think that another good part of the settlement where they’re giving people the option of turning off algorithms… will be really helpful,” Cunningham said.
Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center Children’s Hospital pediatric gastrointestinal psychologist Jennie David-Rodgers, who studies how young people cope with medical issues — including by misusing social media — said she is concerned about whether the protections “actually will be implemented,” although they could be “quite helpful” for protecting developing brains.
“I do think they [safety features required by the settlement] are really positive in the spirit of it,” David-Rodgers said. “I still worry that the content folks are seeing, even during those two hours, can be incredibly, incredibly harmful.”
TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat did not reply to requests for comment.
Eliza Dorton '29 is a reporter from Washington, D.C. and is studying English and public policy. Outside the classroom, she enjoys reading and going on walks.
