Under a child safety agreement reached with Meta, North Carolina stands to collect a guaranteed total of $451 million, with an initial disbursement of $45 million coming first. Under a multistate agreement, Meta has committed to implementing child safety measures across Facebook and Instagram and disbursing up to $17.1 billion among participating states. Attorney General Jeff Jackson, whose office was party to the deal, stated that the resolution compels the company to alter its platform practices while directing hundreds of millions of dollars toward the state.

The agreement included a provision ensuring those opening payments would be delivered promptly to the receiving parties. Nine payments, each due on January 15th, will cover the outstanding balance between now and 2035.

Jackson put forward a proposal that settlement funds be directed toward after-school and summer programs, crisis helplines, and health personnel stationed at schools, noting that minors bore the consequences of Meta's conduct.

In the course of the litigation, North Carolina joined 32 other states in asserting that Meta had breached state consumer protection statutes through platform features on Instagram and Facebook that, the coalition contended, were structured to extend the time minors spent on those services while understating associated risks. Allegations that the company gathered data on children younger than 13 without obtaining parental approval placed Meta in potential breach of the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.

Details drawn from Meta's internal records formed the basis of the account. Those internal records pointed to design choices engineered to trigger reward pathways in the brain, while also acknowledging that adolescents and younger users tend to have less developed impulse control when navigating social media.

Separate records addressed the way Instagram alerts interfered with children's sleep and interrupted their school day, the role face filters played in shaping how young users viewed their own bodies, and the tendency of the platforms to steer minors toward accounts carrying harmful content. Among the topics Meta's internal studies examined were the peer-pressure dynamics embedded within Instagram's design and the number of users on the platform who had not yet turned 13.

Planned age-verification and parental-oversight tools form part of a package of platform changes Meta intends to roll out, targeting stricter access limits for under-13 users alongside expanded account controls available to parents of teenage members. Among the adjustments rolled out, a two-hour ceiling on daily usage stands as one of the restrictions put in place. Once that threshold is reached, browsing Instagram and Facebook feeds will no longer be available, though private message threads remain unaffected.

From midnight until six in the morning, access to feeds will be unavailable for users under 18, and push alerts will stay off between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. A school-year schedule running from August 15 through June 15 adds another layer, cutting off notifications during the 8 a.m.-to-3 p.m. classroom hours. Beyond those time-based measures, tallies of likes will no longer be visible on teenage accounts, while filters designed to alter how a person's face or body looks will be prohibited entirely.

After teenagers spend 15 uninterrupted minutes on Facebook or Instagram, the platforms are set to display prompt notifications nudging them toward stepping away. After a young user accumulates 60 or 90 minutes of daily app usage, the platform is designed to apply tighter alert restrictions.

Alongside the app-default adjustments, Meta outlined plans to give teenagers the option of non-personalised content feeds, keep their accounts set to private from the outset, enable them to flag a range of harmful material, and engage parents, young users, and child safety specialists in an ongoing review of its child protection measures.