From The Times and The Sunday Times, this is The Story.
I'm Luke Jones.
Do you think Instagram is addictive?
You might have a teenager in your life endlessly scrolling late into the night,
haunted by the impossible beauty standards,
plagued perhaps by notifications during school hours.
Or maybe they're consumed by YouTube, Snapchat, or TikTok,
losing hours and hours down an algorithmic black hole of mind-mushing drivel.
Well, 2026 could be the start of some kind of reckoning.
We are following breaking news on a potentially historic settlement
in the ongoing legal fight over social media's impact on teens.
Meta has agreed to a massive settlement of nearly $18 billion
with a bipartisan group of 52 attorneys general.
This is the largest settlement against Big Tech in American history by far.
Meta, who own Facebook, Instagram, and those strange little sunglasses that film people,
has settled a case brought against it by a coalition of US states.
They've denied wrongdoing but have agreed to hand over $18 billion
and to make sweeping changes to their platforms, to the absolute delight of some parents.
I'm very pleased.
There's lots of lawsuits coming for these companies, lots of parents,