CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Virginia has been awarded $353 million out of a $17 billion settlement with 47 states, D.C., and three territories against Meta Platforms Inc., Attorney General Jay Jones announced Wednesday. The settlement is one of the largest state consumer protection settlements in history, outside the major settlements with the tobacco industry in the 1990s.

“As a parent of two young boys, this is especially poignant for me,” Jones told a virtual press conference following the announcement. “They are not yet of the age they can use these platforms, but they will grow up into men who will have to engage with social media and we want to make sure they’re doing it in the safest way possible.”

In addition to the payment, Meta must implement a sweeping set of safety features designed to protect children on its two major platforms, Instagram and Facebook, Jones said.

These include a hard cap on daily time limits and “Productive Pauses,” a combined two-hour daily time limit with mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use for children on its two major platforms, Instagram and Facebook, and additional pauses at 60 and 90 minutes to interrupt endless scrolling and “Nighttime blocks,” restricting children’s access from 12:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.

Meta will also have to limit school-time access for children, eliminating push notifications on weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. during the school year, and add robust age assurance measures to more effectively verify the age of young users.

It will also need safer, age-appropriate content controls, including stronger safeguards against bullying, content promoting eating disorders, and content related to suicide and self-harm, as well as stronger, more user-friendly parental controls and limits on social comparison features, including beauty filters and visible “like” counts, which have been consistently linked to poor mental health outcomes in children and teens.

Both the implementation and efficacy of the features will be regularly assessed by an independent auditor and the settling states.

“Virginia will benefit from meaningful and impactful injunctive relief that is going to fundamentally change the way that minors interact on social media platforms and fundamentally shift the business practices of companies like Facebook and Instagram,” Jones said.

While this particular settlement for Virginia is $353 million, Jones said that total could reach a half-million if other platforms like Tik Tok, YouTube, and Snapchat agree to certain settlement terms.

“This settlement is also going to resolve the state’s claims against Meta for sharing nonpublic information about Facebook users with parties like Cambridge Analytica leading up the 2016 election,” Jones said. “The A.G.’s office will also receive an additional $11 million as a result of the resolution of these claims. For years, Meta intentionally deceived the public about the addictive and harmful design features that have wreaked havoc on youth mental health. I am elated to announce a settlement agreement that will put an end to these dangerous practices and deliver meaningful relief that will protect children from online harm.”

Jones acknowledged this as the culmination of more than five years of work by the Virginia Attorney General’s Office beginning with the previous administration under former Attorney General Jason Miyares.

He said Virginia has been at the leadership table throughout this process, though that changed with the change of party affiliation when he won in 2025, Jones said, because the coalition wanted to ensure an even bipartisan split.

“Our office joined this case because the evidence was so clear that Meta had designed their platforms to be addictive in nature,” Jones said. “They were profiting off preying on the mental health and safety of our children without regard for their well-being. And when pressed about the harm that these platforms had caused, Meta had repeatedly parroted lies and misled the public about the safety of its platforms.

“We all can tell that Meta is a company with seemingly unlimited monetary resources which it used at every turn to try and make this case go away.”

Jones said the money Virginia receives from the settlement will be put into efforts to help protect children.

“We’re going to make sure they’re used for a variety of purposes like unplugged programs and activities for kids that are going to help combat this loneliness and social isolation that we have seen from this online existence,” Jones said. “We also want to make sure we’re supporting digital literacy for parents on social media because I know as a parent I sometimes get tripped up on social media, so I can imagine how our children are dealing with this.

“We’re going to lean into parental controls and make sure our kids are protected. We certainly have a wealth of opportunities to use this money for good for kids across Virginia.”

Clayborne Test Prep & Tutoring Chief Executive Officer Lee Elberson told Cville Right Now age-gating is an appropriate measure in the settlement.

He did note clarification is needed in regard to the time cap of two hours.

While the Virginia Attorney General’s Office release calls the daily time limits required as a “hard cap, “the California Attorney General’s Office release says it’s a “default time limit for users under 18 that can only be lifted by a parent.”

“I don’t know what it is, I think it might be a ‘default’ and that is maybe more dangerous in my mind because that means that parents need to make sure to sort of hold their ground and leave that default on,” Elberson said. “But assuming that stays in place I think the hard rules like the two-hour daily limit and the midnight-to-6 a.m. block, I think those are great.

“One thing I did notice is when this was first being discussed is the two-hour daily limit is assuming it’s just Instagram and Facebook. If other companies like Snapchat and Tik Tok or YouTube sign this agreement, then I think it drops to an hour because they have to share that time across, and I think that’s a good thing.”

A caution he sees with the limit on cosmetic procedure filters is it appears to apply to just in-app filters and not external ones.

“Students could still do that external and just upload the filtered photo,” he said.

Elberson said the age verification aspect continues to be difficult, though he said they’re successfully done in Australia.

“I think if they get rid of everyone under the age of 13 currently on the platform, because that is their policy and that is the rule, that would be great,” he said.

Nevertheless, he’s glad to see this all-in-all.

“Because if we are not letting students use their phones during school then limiting it after school, I think that’s really going to carry the weight of what was initially intended by the no-phone policy at school,” he said. “Some of the research that just got pushed out is that a lot of these no-phone-in-school policies showed what was happening is students who were using them in schools were using them 30-to-45 minutes, or maybe up to an hour, and then all they were doing is just using it more at home. So, you were just displacing that time, and this is actually going to limit it.”

Elberson hopes the settlement money, though AG Jones compares the size to the tobacco settlement, is not spent like most of the tobacco settlement money was.

That money was earmarked to go toward tobacco cessation programs, but very little of that money in the states and Virginia went to general funds. He hopes this money is handled more like opioid settlement funds that have gone toward opioid abatement programs.