The trial that began in Oakland, California, United States, earlier this month (August 2026) was, in a practical sense, about the phone in your child’s hand.
It ended abruptly last Wednesday (Aug 26), in its second week, when Meta agreed to pay up to US$18bil (RM72.6bil), one of the largest consumer settlements in American history, rather than let a jury and judge decide the outcome.
Twenty-nine American states had sued Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, in 2023, with the states of California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey presenting the case first.
Taking advantage of kids?
The American states make three claims.
First, that Meta designed Facebook and Instagram to hook young users: the infinite scroll, autoplaying video, beauty filters and the “like” button were all in the dock.
Second, that Meta knew from its own internal research that these features harmed teenagers, but told the public the opposite.
Third, that it collected personal data from millions of children aged under 13 without parental consent, in breach of a US federal law called COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act), and even used that data to train its AI models.
The state of California’s lawyer opened by reducing Meta’s business model to four ‘H’ words: hook, hold, harvest, hide.
Hook the user, hold them as long as possible, harvest their data and hide the truth.
It worked especially well on children, she said.
Meta’s lawyer replied that nobody disputes some people struggle with social media; that the company has built tools to address it; and that it bars under-13s and has disabled more than a million accounts belonging to this age group.
The company also argued that it could not have misled anyone about addiction because “social media addiction” is not a recognised psychiatric condition.
The witnesses
The first witness in Oakland was Arturo Béjar, a safety engineer who worked at Meta in two stints between 2009 and 2021.
His story is one parents may recognise: his teenage daughter was sent unwanted sexual advances, explicit photographs and misogynistic abuse on Instagram.
When she tried to report it, she found the process either useless or impossible.
Béjar ran a survey of teenagers’ experiences, and in 2021, emailed the results to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
They were that just over half of teenage users had a bad or harmful experience in the previous week, and the offending content was removed 0.02% of the time.
Zuckerberg never replied.
Béjar’s point was that when the CEO makes something a priority, mountains move, but child safety was never made one.
He described the company’s approach to under-13s as “don’t ask, don’t tell”.
The jury then heard from former Meta researchers and psychologist Jean Twenge, whose work on smartphones and teenage mental health shaped much of the public debate.
Instagram chief Adam Mosseri took the stand last Tuesday (Aug 25, 2026).
Zuckerberg himself was expected to testify, but he never had to.
The settlement
Last Wednesday (Aug 26, 2026), court filings revealed that Meta will pay up to US$18bil (RM72.6bil), distributed over 10 years, to fund youth online safety initiatives across the US states.
To put the figure in perspective, it is roughly what Meta earns in a single quarter, and its share price rose on the news.
Money aside, the settlement changes the product.
Meta has agreed to impose default daily limits and night-time blocks for teenage users across the United States, strengthen age checks to keep children off the platforms and out of inappropriate content, and expand tools for parents and guardians.
Notably, about US$5.3bil (RM21.4bil) of the payment is contingent on YouTube and TikTok agreeing to pay the same and adopt similar limits.
As Meta’s chief legal officer put it, teenagers move fluidly across dozens of apps, so the fix must be industry-wide.
Two things the settlement does not do.
It contains no admission of wrongdoing.
And because the case ended without a verdict, it sets no legal precedent; the question of whether these design features unlawfully harm children remains formally unanswered, waiting for the thousands of similar lawsuits still queued up behind this one.
Why did Meta pay?
Its own filings suggested the states’ theory could imply penalties of up to US$1.4 trillion (RM5.6 trillion), and it had just lost the only two cases of this kind to reach a verdict.
In March (2026), a Los Angeles, California, jury found Meta and YouTube liable for harming a young woman who became addicted to their apps as a child, awarding her several million US dollars.
In the same month, a New Mexico jury imposed US$375mil (RM1.52bil) in penalties.
On Aug 6 (2026), the judge added a US$567mil (RM2.29bil) fund for treatment and prevention, bringing the total to US$942mil (RM3.81bil).
The New Mexico court found Meta’s platforms were a “significant contributing cause” of the state’s teenage mental-health crisis and ordered product changes such as “like”-counts hidden for minors, notifications paused overnight and capped usage.
Meta is appealing those decisions, but on facing a judge empowered to impose far more in the recently settled case, the company bought certainty.
Why doctors and parents are worried
The clinical picture is consistent across countries: disrupted sleep, sedentary hours, rising myopia and eating disorders fed by a diet of filtered bodies.
Child psychiatrists see anxiety, depression and self-harm, which, in rich countries, began climbing among adolescent girls around 2012, when smartphones became universal.
They have not come down since.
Meta is right that correlation is not proof of causation.
But the company’s own researchers found in 2021 that Instagram worsened body-image problems for one in three teenage girls.
You do not need to settle the academic debate to recognise that a product described by the manufacturer’s own staff as such, should not be sold to 12-year-olds without restriction.
A company does not pay sixteen billion dollars to make a baseless claim go away.
The cost is not only personal.
Every adolescent with self-harm utilises resources that could be used elsewhere.
And there is the opportunity cost: whatever a generation could have done with that four or five hours a day spent scrolling these apps – well, it is not doing.
How governments are moving
Notice what the settlement’s product changes are: daily limits, night-time blocks, age assurance.
These are precisely the measures governments have begun writing into law.
The American states extracted by lawsuit what others are doing by statute.
Australia was the first to bar under-16s from social media accounts last December (2025).
France has legislated an under-15 ban.
Denmark and Greece are following.
The European Commission released a privacy-preserving age-verification app in April (2026) and is weighing an European Union-wide “social media delay”.
Malaysia has moved faster than most. The Online Safety Act 2025 took effect on Jan 1 (2026).
On June 1 (2026), the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission’s Child Protection Code came into force, requiring any platform with eight million or more Malaysian users to verify age using official documents, block new accounts for under-16s and remove existing ones.
Fines run to RM10mil.
The government calls it “Tunggu 16”.
The burden sits on the platforms, not on parents or children, and the Communications Ministry told Parliament this month that it has already served non-compliance notices.
There are caveats to note though.
Australia’s regulator found, three months in, that more than eight in 10 under-16s were still on the platforms because age checks were weak.
Malaysia’s reliance on MyKad and MyDigital ID makes checks workable, but raises a data question Australia avoided by prohibiting platforms from collecting government identification.
The Communications Minister’s assurance that this is “age verification, not identity verification” is the right principle.
It needs to be enforced in the architecture, with data deleted once age is confirmed.
Talk to your kids
Even a perfectly enforced age gate only delays the problem until the age of 16 when Meta’s new default limits can be switched off.
What happens on the day a child gets an account depends on whether anyone has prepared him or her for it.
That is the thinking behind Bait Baik, a campaign the Social and Economic Research Initiative (Seri) took to SJK (T) Saravathy and the PPR (Program Perumahan Rakyat or People’s Housing Programme) flats at Lembah Pantai, both in Kuala Lumpur.
Working with education social enterprise Arus Academy, Seri turned online safety into a card game that parents, teachers and children play together, rather than learn separately.
The premise is simple: parents, schools, government and the platforms each have a role, and a rule that shifts responsibility to platforms still needs families who understand what they are shielding children from.
The Oakland settlement means no court will rule on whether Meta broke American law, and Meta admits nothing.
Tunggu 16 gives Malaysian parents something a settlement cannot – the law on their side, in advance, without a lawsuit.
What it cannot give them is the conversation with their child.
That part is still ours.
Dr Helmy Haja Mydin is a consultant respiratory physician and Seri chairman. For further information, email starhealth@thestar.com.my. The information provided is for educational and communication purposes only. The Star does not give any warranty on accuracy, completeness, functionality, usefulness or other assurances as to the content appearing in this column. The Star disclaims all responsibility for any losses, damage to property or personal injury suffered directly or indirectly from reliance on such information.
