Wisconsin lawmakers who have sought to address child safety online told the Wisconsin Examiner on Thursday that a settlement worth up to $17.1 billion between the owner of Facebook and Instagram and most states in the U.S. is a win, but that it leaves a lot to be done to protect kids.

Wisconsin was one of 47 states involved in a lawsuit, filed in 2023 against Meta, that alleged that the social media giant purposely designed its platforms with addictive features, knew it was exposing children to serious mental harms and intentionally misled the public about the safety of those platforms. 

Wisconsin is set to receive between $219 million and $313 million from the settlement, depending on whether other social media companies agree to the terms. The company in its settlement did not admit to wrongdoing.

For years, concerns about the safety of children online and efforts to protect their mental and physical health have been bubbling up. Wisconsin has adopted laws to ban cellphones during class time and recently expanded its Wisconsin’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

Rep. Lindee Brill (R-Sheboygan Falls) and Rep. Renuka Mayadev (D-Madison) were part of a group of lawmakers tasked with studying ways the state could protect children online during the 2025-26 legislative session. The task force resulted in an array of proposed bills aimed at addressing the issue, though many — including barring addictive features online for young users, age verification requirements, prohibition against chatbots for children without safety features and mental health warning on social media — did not become law.

“It’s unfortunate that it got to the point that we’ve seen children lose their lives, go through mental health situations,” Brill said. “I believe these platforms understood what they were doing was damaging to children, so while it’s a win, it’s unfortunate that we had to reach a settlement to get this taken care of when this wasn’t addressed previously.”

Mayadev said Meta “capitulated” with the settlement and that “it’s about time” something was done.  

“Young people are feeling more than ever lonely, have had increased suicide ideation, have had more anxiety and eating disorders. We’ve just seen the tremendous detrimental effects of social media,” Mayadev said. 

Both lawmakers said that the settlement is just a start.

During a Wednesday press conference, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said the settlement is the largest Big Tech settlement in the history of the country and the largest state consumer protection settlement since the settlements with Big Tobacco in the 1990s. 

According to the New York Times, the Meta settlement’s base cost will be $12 billion, but an additional $5 billion will be paid by Meta if other social media companies also agree to pay in $5 billion. The company has also agreed to the two-hour limit on screen time for children, though it could be decreased to a one-hour limit if other companies agree to the same.

Kaul said the next step is to determine where the funding should go. 

“What I’m going to be doing is everything I can to put these funds toward keeping kids safe in Wisconsin,” Kaul said. The funds, he added, could go towards initiatives such as crisis intervention services, after-school programming and digital wellness use and mental health programming.

Brill noted that while the settlement seems like a lot of money, it is only a small portion of what the multi-trillion dollar company brings in each year.

“I don’t think we can put a worth on the number of children and the damage it’s caused, so while we should celebrate it, I think it’s a cautious celebration because there’s so much work to do and so much loss that came in the meantime,” Brill said. 

Brill and Mayadev said they’d both like lawmakers to be involved in conversations over where the funds are allocated.

Kaul said the most important piece of the settlement is the sweeping safety changes Meta has agreed to make to its platforms. 

“I hope they can set a new standard for the entire industry so that kids who are using social media can stay safe and remain healthy as they’re online,” Kaul said. 

Changes include stronger age verification of users between the ages of 13 and 17, mandatory pauses at 15 minutes, 60 minutes and 90 minutes, limiting screen time for teenagers up to 17 for two hours a day, restrictions on access at night and an elimination of push notifications during school hours. 

“We’re gonna see stronger, more friendly, user-friendly parental controls in place as well, so parents are going to be able more easily to play a larger role in limiting their kids’ use of these platforms,” Kaul said. Beauty filters — which distort a user’s face in real time to change its shape or add makeup — will also be limited. 

Brill said she thinks a key part of the settlement is that the company appears to be keeping “parents in the driver’s seat .” She said she will be interested to see whether the other companies agree, however. Some of the work, she said, will be continuing to push for state-level laws that can address the issue, which she described as nonpartisan. Brill does not face a challenger in her bid for reelection this year. 

“I met some of the families who have had things happen with their children, and it’s absolutely devastating, and it doesn’t matter which way your house votes; it affects everybody,” Brill said. “We’re just seeing the mental health of our state and our children, being so affected by this, so my hope is we can make a smart decision with [the settlement funds], and that we can, as a Legislature, continue to move forward and introduce great legislation to a governor’s desk that’s willing to work with us on it.”

Mayadev said she doesn’t think  the settlement’s guardrails are sufficient.

“Why would we trust the company who has put our children in harm’s way to come up with the solution to protect them?” she said. “No parent — and I’m a parent — should feel like ‘OK, well now let me just hand over the phone and the social media apps because Meta and the other big tech CEOs are gonna care for my children.’”

Mayadev said that ideally regulations on companies would be put in place on a federal level. She said legislation would ensure it is the company’s obligation to make sure platforms are safe rather than burdening parents. She said that “children are bright” and can likely find ways around some of the changes that are being discussed. 

“At the federal level, we need our congressional folks to act because then we’d have uniform guardrails, guidelines for everybody in the United States to adhere to and to protect children,” Mayadev said. “If Congress continues not to act, we’re going to have to do it at the state level, and then what the problem with that is, it’s piecemeal. What we do is different than Minnesota, which is different than Michigan or Ohio.” 

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Meta agreed Wednesday to pay $17 billion and add stronger child-safety measures to its Facebook and Instagram platforms as part of a landmark legal settlement that ended a trial over teen social media addiction and settled claims filed by 47 states.

Wisconsin would receive at least $219 million and up to $313 million if conditions involving other social media companies are met, through what state Attorney General Josh Kaul called the “largest Big Tech settlement in the history of the country.”

The settlement resolved a pivotal case years in the making that sought to hold the tech giant accountable for the role its platforms played in undermining children’s mental health. The effort targeted features designed to hook young people’s attention.

“For years, Meta intentionally deceived the public about the addictive and harmful design features that have wreaked havoc on youth mental health,” Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones said. The settlement “will put an end to these dangerous practices and deliver meaningful relief that will protect children from online harm.”

“This resolution provides for several changes that prioritize kids’ well-being over Meta’s profits — as it should have been all along,” Kaul said in a statement. “This is a monumental step in changing the role of social media in kids’ lives for the better.”

Speaking at a Wednesday press conference, Kaul listed a variety of potential uses for the money, including school district grants for mental health programs, youth crisis intervention, after-school programs, digital wellness instruction or training for medical providers on the effects of interactive media use and body dysmorphia.

If approved by the court, the deal will stop an avalanche of litigation by states against Meta, although the company still faces lawsuits from individuals and school districts across the U.S. For the states, the settlement delivers money for programs to benefit kids’ mental health, including after-school or summer activities and digital literacy counselors.

Advocates cheered the new protections, including default time limits and the disabling of features such as “like” counts.

But “we cannot truly protect all children and teens until these protections are required on every platform and are permanent — that’s something only Congress can do,” said Sacha Haworth, executive director of The Tech Oversight Project.

The settlement also includes payments resolving claims arising from Meta’s sharing of nonpublic Facebook user information with third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, ahead of the 2016 election.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the money would be paid out over 10 years, with the state getting at least $1.5 billion. New Jersey expects to receive at least $525 million. Massachusetts said it was in line for at least $366 million. Virginia’s share is worth $353 million.

Meta urges rivals to adopt similar safety measures

Meta said in a blog post that it was “building on our longstanding efforts to empower parents and support teens.”

“Ensuring teens have a safe and productive experience on our platforms is an absolute imperative for Meta,” the company said. “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.”

The company urged rivals TikTok and YouTube to adopt similar safety measures.

The $17 billion settlement is a fraction of Meta’s 2025 revenue of $201 billion.

The agreement cuts short an ongoing court case involving California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey, which were among 29 states that sued Meta in 2023. CEO Mark Zuckerberg was among those expected to take the stand before a jury in federal court in California.

The lawsuit accused Meta of contributing to the youth mental health crisis by deliberately designing features that addict children to its platforms and hiding them from the public. The case also argued that Meta violated federal laws by routinely collecting data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent.

The trial kicked off last week in Oakland, California, with U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers overseeing the proceedings. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, began his testimony late Tuesday and defended Meta’s record and progress on child safety and privacy.

The cases in other states had been expected to go to trial later. In addition, nine attorneys general filed lawsuits in their respective states.

New features to include time limits and curbs on push notifications

Under the proposed settlement, Meta agreed to adopt a series of safety features, including a “hard cap” on daily time limits and pauses for children using Instagram and Facebook.

It will eliminate push notifications during weekday school hours and bring in “robust” age-assurance measures and “age-appropriate” content controls to prevent bullying and harmful material about eating disorders and self-harm.

There will be stronger and more user-friendly parental controls and limits on social comparison features such as “like” counts.

An independent auditor will assess how Meta is implementing the safety features and how effective they are.

Meta put the settlement at $18 billion, a figure that apparently includes a large award for Texas.

The company said 30% of that amount — about $5.3 billion — will be released to states only if rivals YouTube and TikTok meet two conditions: implementing similar safety features, including a one-hour daily time limit, a nighttime block and age-assurance measures; and paying the same amount, split between the two companies.

Neither YouTube owner Google nor TikTok responded immediately to requests for comments.

Wisconsin part of bipartisan coalition

The federal lawsuit was the result of an investigation led by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general. It followed newspaper reports, first by The Wall Street Journal in 2021, that found that the company knew about the harm Instagram can cause teenagers — especially teen girls — when it comes to mental health and body image issues.

Meta has since added a host of safety features to Instagram, including separate accounts for teenagers with stronger protections around messaging and privacy, along with content restrictions.

But child safety experts, along with some former Meta employees, have long contended that the features are little more than window dressing.

Arturo Béjar, a former Meta engineering director, said during his testimony last week that Meta consistently prioritized profits over safety in designing its products, focusing on how often and for how long people used them, even if it was detrimental to their mental well-being.

“If you step away from the product, they are not going to make any money,” he said.

While the four states in the Oakland trial did not officially say how much they had been seeking, Meta said in a court filing that financial penalties in the case could amount to as much as $1.4 trillion — a figure legal experts said was unlikely, if not impossible.

Jim Malewitz of Wisconsin Watch contributed reporting.

Wisconsin to receive up to $313 million in landmark Meta settlement is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A federal judge ruled late last week that the Trump administration had acted illegally last summer when it cut millions in federal grant money. 

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in the District of Massachusetts ruled on Friday that the White House’s Office of Management and Budget does not have the authority to revoke grants on a whim. OMB had argued that a line in the federal regulations gave the White House authority to cancel grants to account for shifts in priorities. 

Talwani found that the agency couldn’t cancel grants to achieve priorities that were announced after the grants had been awarded. 

Wisconsin was joined by 22 other states and Washington D.C. in filing a lawsuit against OMB pulling back grant funds. The Wisconsin Department of Justice noted in a press release that the state had lost tens of millions of dollars in federal grant funding meant to help provide Wisconsin-grown food to local food banks, modernize the state’s unemployment system and fund research at UW-Madison. 

“The Trump administration has been recklessly attempting to slash funding that supports important programs,” said Attorney General Josh Kaul. “This decision shuts down an unlawful avenue that the Trump administration was using to try to impose those cuts.”

The Wisconsin Ethics Commission has dismissed a complaint alleging Attorney General Josh Kaul violated state rules when the Department of Justice hired out of state lawyers on contract to enforce the state’s environmental regulations. 

The complaint was dismissed by the commission late last month in a closed session and released to the public last week. The issue has been highlighted by Republican legislators eager to land blows on Kaul, who is running for re-election against Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney, a Republican. 

Faced with a limited budget from the GOP-controlled Legislature and increased scrutiny on the DOJ since the enactment of the Republican lame duck laws in 2018, Kaul hired the out-of-state lawyers to assist with the enforcement of the state’s environmental regulations. 

The lawyers were given fellowships to work as special assistant attorneys general through a New York University program tied to former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The attorneys were paid by the NYU program and officially classified as volunteers under the state employment system yet given the powers of an assistant attorney general.

In a statement to the Wisconsin Examiner, Kaul said the dismissal of the complaint confirms that Republicans were only trying to score partisan points against him. 

“This unambiguous dismissal from the bipartisan Ethics Commission makes it even clearer that the Senate Oversight Committee is a partisan stunt,” Kaul said. “The Wisconsin Department of Justice will not be deterred from effectively enforcing our laws.”

The complaint over the fellows was made to the ethics commission in February 2025, alleging Kaul engaged in a quid pro quo by hiring the fellows to work on specifically environmental litigation. 

This February, the newly established Committee on the Oversight of the Department of Justice held a multi-day hearing in which Kaul and other DOJ officials were grilled about the program. In March, the committee released a report detailing the Republican belief that hiring the fellows amounted to Kaul putting the department up for sale and letting state litigation strategy be determined by an outside interest group. 

Leading the testimony against the DOJ during the February hearing were a representative from Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s largest business lobby and a powerful GOP ally, and a dairy farmer who was subject to an enforcement action by the state after he operated his factory farm without a permit for six years. The committee was chaired by Sen. Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk), who has a legislative history of opposing environmental initiatives. 

In the report, Republicans allege that the arrangement was “not authorized” by Wisconsin statutes, that the DOJ violated state law by not immediately administering the attorneys oaths of office, exposes concerns about the state’s system for adjudicating ethics complaints, opens the state up to influence from outside interests and that the DOJ did not fully cooperate with records requests filed by the committee. 

The report recommends that the DOJ immediately terminate the agreements that facilitated the hiring of the attorneys. It also recommends that the Legislature pass a resolution declaring the hirings unlawful, more strictly manage the processes through which the DOJ is funded and pass legislation that only state employees can conduct prosecutions. Additionally the report states that government attorneys should take their oaths of office before conducting any work for the state and that the state Ethics Commission should be subject to faster timelines for adjudicating complaints.

In the dismissal of the ethics complaint, the commission found that Kaul doesn’t gain any personal benefit by hiring low-level attorneys to handle litigation.

“As an elected official, [Kaul] is vested with significant discretion in what his agency focuses its efforts on,” the dismissal states. “It is, in fact, possible that, as a result of the acceptance of the legal services of the fellow, the DOJ will be able to participate in more environmental litigation or other official actions related to the environment. It is also possible that the DOJ might be able to shift a paid staff member to other work. However, the statutory influence clause is not concerned with whether accepting the service of the legal fellow could reasonably be expected to influence the

DOJ’s actions. It is concerned with whether it could reasonably be expected to influence the state public official’s actions. By naming only the Attorney General, the question is whether acceptance of the free services could reasonably be expected to influence the Respondent’s official actions, not others in the Department of Justice.” 

The dismissal also noted that the state has an interest in hiring interns and fellows to complete the necessary work of state government.

“Accepting unpaid interns and unpaid fellows is a benefit to the agency in which they work and to the State more generally,” the dismissal states. “Absent additional facts, unpaid interns and unpaid fellows are not a benefit to a specific state public official. This is true in every case where an unpaid intern or unpaid fellow works. Moreover, the services of an unpaid intern or fellow, are generally of the nature and type that it is not reasonable for a person to expect it to influence the elected head of a large agency, in the absence of other facts.” 

Additionally, the dismissal states that the commission “is aware that the Legislature is concerned” about the issue and noted that the ethics statutes aren’t the proper venue for handling the question. 

“The ethics laws were not intended to cover discretionary decisions where there is no personal benefit to officials or more than a theoretical potential impact or influence on an official’s decision,” it states. “As noted above, the ethics laws are not intended to apply to agencies; they are intended to apply to individual officials. Whether an agency should accept the services of someone that is provided by or paid by an outside organization, is a question of policy that can be addressed by the Legislature. Indeed, it is the body politic that is best suited for that purpose.”

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Friday that the Wisconsin Attorney General can determine where to send money the Department of Justice receives through settlement agreements. 

The 5-2 decision — which includes a partial concurrence from Justice Brian Hagedorn — strikes down a measure enacted by the Republican-controlled Legislature to take power from executive branch agencies after the elections of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul in 2018. 

During that lame duck period at the end of a Republican administration, the Legislature enacted a law that requires the attorney general to deposit settlement money into the state’s general fund, which is largely controlled by the Legislature. However within the general fund are many sub-accounts through which many of the state’s programs and services are rendered. State law distinguishes between depositing money into the general fund and crediting money to specific programs. 

Since the lame duck law’s enactment, Kaul has put settlement earnings into the general fund and then credited the money to DOJ programs within the fund. The Legislature has argued that Kaul has been purposefully flouting the intent of the law, which was to give control over the money to legislative Republicans. 

The legal dispute in the case, including at the oral arguments in March, has flipped the usual script in which Republicans argue for laws to be interpreted strictly, following exactly what a statute says. 

“[The statute] entitled “Deposit of settlement funds,” provides in its entirety that ‘[t]he attorney general shall deposit all settlement funds into the general fund,’” Justice Rebecca Dallet wrote in the majority opinion. “This simple, declarative sentence identifies a class of state money (‘settlement funds’) and imposes a single, narrow restriction on where that money must be deposited (into the state treasury, specifically ‘the general fund’). It says nothing whatsoever about where that money may or must be credited after it is deposited.”

Dallet continued that the Court wasn’t buying the Legislature’s argument that a deeper meaning should be read into the language.

Quoting the Court’s precedent, Dallet wrote, “The problem with these arguments is that ‘we interpret the statutory language the legislature enacted, and will not read into a statute language that it does not contain or reasonably imply.’” 

In a dissent, Justice Rebecca Bradley, partially joined by Annette Ziegler — both of whom signed off on many of the lame duck laws and their specific intent to disempower Democrats — argued that the Court’s majority was only aiming to give a legal victory to an elected Democrat in an election year.

“The majority refuses to apply the law, which favors the Republican-controlled legislature over Democrat Attorney General Josh Kaul. Lady Justice wears a blindfold, not blinders,” Bradley wrote in an opinion that also cited the 2004 film “Dodgeball.” “This is not the first time justice has taken a back seat to political interests. The members of the majority extend the Democrats’ almost unbroken winning streak in litigation against the Republican legislature since the progressives took control.”