States Now Have to Decide How to Spend Metas Settlement Billions

After Meta agreed to pay as much as $17 billion to settle claims that it had built Instagram and Facebook to hook children, attorneys general in several states outlined how the money should be spent.The funding should “repair the harms of unhealthy social media use,” expand youth crisis intervention and restore the mental health and safety of children, they declared in news releases.But the settlement with Meta in August cements little in required allocations toward those goals.And if earlier settlements with the tobacco and opioid industries are any guide, it is much simpler to win the money than ensure it reaches the intended beneficiaries.In an appendix to the Meta agreement where each state set terms for spending its share, most specify no purpose.Wyoming sends every dollar to its general fund.

Alaska splits its share between the general fund and its attorney general’s enforcement budget.The total includes $459 million settling what a spokesperson for California’s Justice Department called “a prior, unrelated multistate investigation” into Meta’s Cambridge Analytica data leak.The rest of the settlement leaves about 70 percent of the money to the discretion of state officials, up to $11.7 billion, with 23 percent aimed at youth mental health or social media harms.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe....