Four US states seek US$1.4 trillion from Meta over alleged harms to young users

Meta Platforms said in a court filing on Monday, 6 July 2026, that four US states are seeking US$1.4 trillion in penalties and disgorgement over allegations that the company designed Facebook and Instagram to be addictive to young users and misled the public about the risks its platforms pose to them.

The disclosure, made in a submission to the US District Court for the Northern District of California, comes ahead of a trial scheduled to open on 18 August in Oakland before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.

The figure, not previously made public, was put forward by the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey in sealed filings on how penalties should be calculated should the states prevail at trial. The sum is close to Meta's market capitalisation, which stands at around US$1.5 trillion.

Meta's filing argues the figure has "no analog in the history of consumer protection enforcement" and says it exceeds even the largest prior consumer protection settlements, including the US$206 billion multistate tobacco settlement and the US$2.5 billion the Federal Trade Commission recently secured from Amazon, by several orders of magnitude.

Scope of the trial

Meta's filing stresses that the August trial is confined to three categories of alleged wrongdoing: specific statements by Meta that were allegedly false or misleading, three specific design features said to be unfair practices, and allegations that Meta violated the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The three challenged features are appearance-altering tools, features restricting time spent on the platform, and Instagram's multiple-accounts function.

Meta argues that any penalty must be tied to those specific claims rather than to a broader theory that its platforms are addictive or harmful to teenage mental health. The company says the states' calculations instead sweep in and double-count every teenage user of its platforms, and every month in which a teenager spent more than half an hour on them, regardless of whether that use was linked to any proven violation.

How the states' calculations were built

The states' proposed penalties are set out in six "remedy charts", according to Meta's filing. One chart seeks maximum penalties for every estimated teenage and under-13 user of Meta's platforms. A second seeks penalties for every month in which a teenager exceeded set time thresholds of half an hour, one hour or two hours a day.

Further charts seek disgorgement of profits tied to those same user populations, while a separate chart covers alleged COPPA violations linked to under-13 accounts.

Meta's lawyers argue the charts recover for the same individuals multiple times over, since a single teenage user could be counted once under the population-wide chart and again under the time-spent chart, while under-13 users could be counted separately across disabled, hard-linked and soft-matched accounts.

The company's lawyers argued that the proposed remedies "have no basis in the record in this case" and rely on features the court has already found immune from liability under Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, which shields online platforms from liability for content posted by users.

Meta says its experts have shown that time spent on its platforms is driven largely by notifications, algorithms and infinite scroll, all features the court has ruled are covered by that immunity.

Meta also cites the states' own expert evidence against them, noting that a study by psychologist Jean Twenge, cited by the states, found that teenagers who used no social media reported higher rates of unhappiness than those who used it for up to an hour a day.

Meta says the states dropped comparable calculations for higher usage thresholds, of three, four and five hours a day, because those figures came out to zero. The company also disputes that it profits meaningfully from teenage users at all, saying its own expert's data shows advertising revenue tied to under-18 users is limited, and that under-13 individuals are barred from its platforms entirely, meaning no advertising revenue could be attributed to them.

Further requests to the court

Beyond disputing the size and structure of the states' claims, Meta is asking the court to strike the population-wide and time-spent penalty calculations, order the removal of duplicate counts from the remaining charts, and rule that the court alone, rather than the advisory jury sitting in the case, should decide any award of monetary relief.

Meta is also seeking updated depositions, capped at three and a half hours each, of the three experts whose work underpins the calculations, arguing it did not have the final figures when it first questioned them.

Reaction and prior verdicts

A spokesperson for California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the lawsuit alleges that Meta has prioritised profits over the safety of children and fuelled a mental health crisis affecting a generation of American children, adding that the California Department of Justice looks forward to holding the company accountable at trial in August.

Spokespeople for the attorneys general of Colorado and New Jersey declined to comment, while Kentucky's attorney general's office did not respond to requests for comment.

A Meta spokesperson said the plaintiffs' calculations "have no basis in fact or law" and that the company would continue to defend itself against the states' claims.

Twenty-nine states have sued Meta in the wider litigation, with most alleging COPPA violations. A further 14 states have brought separate state-law claims, due to be heard at a trial in February.

Last month, on 30 June, Judge Gonzalez Rogers rejected Meta's bid to dismiss the case, ruling that factual disputes remained over whether its platforms were addictive, whether Meta had falsely denied designing them that way, and whether they were partly marketed to children.

Earlier this year, Meta suffered setbacks in two related cases. In California state court, it was found liable, alongside Google, for fuelling social media addiction in a woman identified as KGM, with the two companies ordered to pay US$6 million in damages combined, of which Meta was liable for 70%.

In New Mexico, a jury awarded the state US$375 million in March after finding Meta had misled consumers about platform safety, a verdict Meta spokesperson Andy Stone described as "just a fraction of what the state sought".

A judge in New Mexico is now considering a second phase of that case, seeking additional damages and a court order requiring changes to Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Meta shares rose 3% in trading on Tuesday.