Florida asks court to order Meta to disable features it says hook teenagers

Florida has asked a state judge to order Meta to switch off features that the state says keep children and teenagers using Instagram and Facebook for long periods, in a request that separates it from the states that have settled with the company.

The Republican attorney general, James Uthmeier, announced on Wednesday that his office had asked the Pasco County court for a temporary injunction. If granted, it would require Meta to identify and remove Florida users under 14, restrict the state's teenagers to two hours a day across all of the company's apps, and disable autoplay and infinite scrolling for young users, according to the filing.

What Florida wants disabled

According to reports of the motion, it asks for the immediate deactivation, on accounts belonging to minors, of infinite scrolling, automatic video playback and night notifications sent between 22:00 and 06:00. It also seeks the removal or restriction of face- and body-altering filters on minors' accounts, which the state says promote body-image disorders and dysmorphia among adolescents, and an effective age verification system that would remove every account held by a child under 13.

Reports of the filing describe two further demands: that teenagers be blocked from messaging once their daily time limit is reached, and that Meta be barred from showing them advertising. The filing also asks the court to make Meta hide public like counts for young users of Facebook and Instagram. These terms would go further than those Meta agreed in its settlement with other states.

Uthmeier said on X that Florida had asked a court to order Meta to disable the features that hook teenagers and to leave the state's children alone while they are at school or asleep. He said Meta had pressed Florida to accept what he described as a low offer, and that the state would not betray its children.

He also said Meta had lied to parents in presenting Instagram and Facebook as safe, and that an investigation had shown the platforms fostered anxiety, depression and eating disorders and featured, in his words, "predators in direct messages".

The motion also alleges that statements Mark Zuckerberg made to Congress about protections for young users, and about keeping under-age users off Meta's platforms, did not match the company's internal policies, data and research. Florida's lawsuit against Meta was filed in 2024, under its then attorney general, Ashley Moody, and is brought under the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, a consumer protection law that prohibits deceptive, unfair and unconscionable acts.

Florida alone outside the settlement

The request came weeks after Meta announced, on 26 August, a settlement of claims brought by US states over the platforms' capacity to foster addiction in minors, among other reasons: at least £9.2bn (US$12.1bn), rising to up to £13.0bn (US$17.1bn) according to the New York Attorney General (Meta and Reuters put the maximum at about £13.6bn, or US$18bn). Meta also committed to changes for teenage users. The company denied acting improperly in reaching the settlement.

In its filing, Florida described the settlement as a "slap on the wrist" that would be seen cynically as the cost of doing business and would not prevent such conduct in future. Uthmeier declined to join the settlement and is continuing Florida's own lawsuit against the company. Florida pointed to New Mexico's case against Meta, brought under a similar consumer protection law, as support for seeking comparable relief in its own case.

Background: the wider litigation

The state's move sits within a larger body of claims. In August 2026, Meta went on trial in Oakland, California, before the federal judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, accused by 29 state attorneys general of designing and operating features that foster addiction in children and teenagers on Instagram and Facebook. Prosecutors allege the company violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by collecting information from children under 13, designed its networks to be addictive to minors, deceived the public about the dangers of its platforms and ignored harm to young people's mental and physical health. The states were seeking changes to how Facebook and Instagram operate and financial penalties.

California's attorney general, Rob Bonta, said exploiting the state's most vulnerable residents to increase corporate profits was not only morally wrong but also illegal. His Colorado counterpart, Phil Weiser, said young people faced a serious mental health crisis and that powerful technology companies had to comply with the law and take responsibility.

The Oakland case is part of multidistrict litigation bringing together claims against Meta and other technology companies including Google, TikTok and Snap. The claims allege the companies designed their platforms to maximise screen time, which could foster addictive behaviour among children and teenagers and cause emotional and physical harm, in the most serious cases death. The trial ended with the settlement announced on 26 August.

Meta rejected the allegations. A company spokesperson said that prosecutors had presented no evidence that anyone in their states had been deceived, said prosecutors claimed harmless features such as holding a second Instagram account had harmed residents, and accused them of seeking to penalise Meta for challenges facing the whole industry, such as age verification.

Under the request filed on Wednesday, the measures would take effect immediately and remain in force while Florida's case continues, according to the filing.

For families asking what this means for them, our guides explain who can claim and how social media claims work, how group litigation is run, what court cases have decided so far, the latest developments, and the evidence on harm to children.