Meta reportedly paid 2 teens a combined $7 million in the past 2 weeks to settle social media addiction claims

Meta’s not alone. TikTok has also been settling cases, as has Snap. The settlement amounts were confidential. Bloomberg learned the figures through conversations with anonymous sources who were familiar with the numbers.

The numbers are nowhere close to the amount the company would risk in negative public opinion should the cases go to trial. According to Bloomberg, there are approximately 9,800 pending personal injury cases in state and federal courts against the top four social media giants.

An estimated 2,000 school districts are included in that number, which could see much more sizable figures either via settlement or jury verdicts.

Big penalties

In March, a New Mexico jury found Meta’s platforms prioritized company profits over the safety of users, making Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, harmful to children’s mental health. It assessed the company with a $375 million penalty.

That same month, a California jury sided with a woman who blamed Meta and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) for the depression and anxiety she faced after using the platforms as a child. The verdict in that case was lower — coming in at $6 million — but it was the first time a jury found that social media was being engineered to take advantage of developing brains, including those in teens. And that opened social media companies to a much greater risk of future verdicts.

(Meta and Google have said they plan to appeal the ruling.)

State settlements

While the payouts in the recent settlements with teens are significant, they’re barely a drop in the bucket compared to what Meta has agreed to with state prosecutors.

In August, the company agreed to pay $18 billion over the next 10 years to a group of states to resolve their swath of claims tied to teenage use of the platforms. TikTok, YouTube and Snap (NYSE:SNAP) face separate legal actions by a number of state attorneys general which have not yet been settled. Meta, as part of its settlement, said it would not pay $5.3 billion unless TikTok and YouTube make similar agreements to states.

New Mexico, which won $1 billion earlier this year in a trial separate from the one mentioned above, was not included in the payout. And Florida rejected it as insufficient.

“The payouts are peanuts compared to the profound harms Meta’s profit-driven addictive features inflicted on kids, and a slap on the wrist for a trillion-dollar corp that’ll pay more to lawyers than to the states,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said in a social media post. “We’ll see them at trial.”