Tennessee is set to receive more than $752 million following a landmark multistate lawsuit and settlement with social media giant Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.
The 2023 lawsuit was brought against Meta by 47 states, as well as Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands. On Tuesday, a $17.1 billion settlement was announced, with Tennessee’s net portion set to benefit the state’s new Children’s Digital Protection Fund.
That fund was created by the state legislature earlier this year. It can be used for “research related to the impact of social media and technology on the mental health and well-being of minors,” as well as education and mental health programs for children, suicide prevention and law enforcement resources related to the exploitation of children.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, June 2025
“The settlement addresses Meta’s role in an industry-wide problem, and now the rest of Big Tech needs to catch up to Meta and implement similar protections,” says Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti in a statement. "We’re going to make sure they do.”
Plaintiffs argued that Meta’s social media platforms harm children and that the company misled the public about the safety of the platforms, especially to children’s mental health.
The settlement agreement will soon see Meta introduce daily time limits, “nighttime blocks,” limited access during school hours, and stronger content controls and parental controls for minor users of Meta’s social media platforms.
“Ensuring teens have a safe and productive experience on our platforms is an absolute imperative for Meta,” the company says in a statement. "We want to get this right for parents and teens, and that’s why we partnered with state attorneys general to set a new industry standard.”
Children featured in content also have the right to ask for old videos to be removed
Meta is also now calling for those same changes to be implemented by its top competitors: TikTok, whose U.S. operations are owned by TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC with tech giant Oracle as one of three controlling owners, and YouTube, owned by Google parent Alphabet. The actions could lead to drastic change in the social media landscape for minors in the U.S. Similar actions have been taken to curb children’s access to social media in other countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Britain and France.
“This massive settlement shows how terrified Meta and Mark Zuckerberg are of accountability in open court,” U.S. Sen. and Tennessee Republican gubernatorial candidate Marsha Blackburn says in a statement. Blackburn also touts her sponsored federal legislation, the Kids Online Safety Act, which passed the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation earlier this month.
“We applaud the bipartisan coalition of state Attorneys General for forcing Meta to start paying a real price for the harm its products have caused an entire generation of young people," reads Blackburn's statement. "The product design changes imposed under this settlement are a first step toward giving kids and parents the tools they need to take back control of their online lives, but they can be strengthened. Meta notes that these terms are only required to stay in place for 10 years — we must ensure permanent change. We also need safeguards that apply across the board — to all social media companies — not just Instagram and Facebook. This settlement once again demands that Congress pass the Kids Online Safety Act into law before the end of the year.”
This article was first published by our sister publication, the Nashville Post.
