ChildFund's Response to the Landmark Online Safety Settlement

On Wednesday, August 26, 2026, Meta reached a $17 billion settlement with 47 U.S. states over harms against children on Meta's platforms. This settlement announcement clearly shows that when harm is foreseeable, safety cannot be an afterthought. It sends a strong message: Big Tech can no longer ignore their responsibility to keep children safe on their platforms and must build safety into the way their products are designed from the start.

It also highlights the need to move from responding to harm to preventing it. That means strengthening the policies, standards and governance systems that determine how digital access is planned, funded and delivered for children not just in the U.S. but around the world. 

ChildFund is a leader in the global movement to protect children online. While we recognize that the U.S. settlement is an important first step, even $17 billion is a fraction of the resources and economic power of the most profitable and influential companies of our time—and only a drop in a bucket of what will be required to address the scale of the problem.

The media has framed this settlement as a Big Tobacco moment, but Big Tobacco was a movement that took four decades of survivor advocacy, litigation, legislation and global pressure before meaningful accountability was achieved. We are at the center of the movement to protect children online. We will continue to push for laws and policies in the United States and around the world that center children’s wellbeing, safety-by-design, and the voices and experiences of survivors and families.

We are grateful to the families and survivors who have fought tirelessly for accountability and kept the experiences of children at the center of this conversation. We are also grateful to the attorneys general who took on this fight. The next step is to turn this moment into lasting protections that ensure safe digital access for every child everywhere.