BATON ROUGE -- A massive $12.19 billion settlement, which could climb to $17.1 billion, between Meta and 47 states on Wednesday will bring $180 million to Louisiana and make changes to children's social media usage on Instagram and Facebook.

The settlement comes after a years-long legal battle that started when a coalition of states, including Louisiana, filed a landmark complaint against Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, back in 2023.

"It asserts unfair trade and deceptive trade practice claims that go specifically to how Meta algorithms worked and how they were targeting youth and deceptively marketing these platforms," Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said.

Murrill says this agreement resolves claims that Meta designed Instagram with addictive features and misled the public about the safety of its program.

As part of the settlement, Meta must implement a series of safety features on Facebook and Instagram. According to Murrill, these include:

- Hard cap daily time limits and "Productive Pauses" for children: for its two platforms, Instagram and Facebook, a combined two-hour daily time limit with mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use and again at 60 and 90 minutes to interrupt endless scrolling. These limits remain in effect for five years. If Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube adopt comparable terms, the daily limit on each platform will drop to 60 minutes for 10 years.

- "Nighttime blocks" restricting children's access from 12:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.

- Limited school-time access for children, eliminating push notifications on weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. during the school year.

- Stronger, more user-friendly parental controls.

- Both the implementation and efficacy of the features will be regularly assessed by an independent auditor and the settling states.

Meta must also use more effective age verification for young users.

"I think the technology is there for these companies to do more than that, and so we're going to work with them to make sure that the technological choices that they make are meaningful. There are also meaningful limits that Meta is going to impose on teen accounts and on checking the age limits of accounts, so they're going to have to do some continuous verification, and some of that can be done simply through their own content monitoring systems, which do exist and they use them now," Murrill said.

WBRZ asked Murrill how Louisiana plans to ensure these promises by Meta are kept.

"One of the components of it is an auditor, who is going to be tracking their compliance with these terms," Murrill said.

As mentioned, Louisiana will receive about $180 million across nine years, with Murrill saying the first payment will be about $17 million.

"The money is primarily intended to be used for remediation, and that's a pretty broad term. I believe that the money should be used, first of all, for enforcement. I think that we still have a huge problem in our state addressing some of the sex predators that are coming after our kids online, and these applications have facilitated that epidemic problem in our community."

Murrill said the money should also be used for educating children and parents about how to protect themselves from being exploited online and then mental health, treatment, research for "some of the problems that have been created by the ubiquitous use of these apps and the consequences to society that have resulted."

WBRZ spoke with Reza Anaraky, an LSU Computer Science Division Assistant Professor. He told WBRZ that these changes will help make the system safer, but not bulletproof it.

"The responsibility is on the parents, just like in a car; even with a car seat, you have to supervise a child. With these digital platforms, parents still need to monitor the children. There are tools that you can install on children's devices and monitor them and, for example, limit their access and see what they are up to or what they are installing," Anaraky said.

In a statement online, Meta said the settlement builds on its longstanding efforts to empower parents and support teens, calling on TikTok and YouTube to put the same security measures in place.

WBRZ asked Murrill when these social media changes would take place.

"They are supposed to be implemented immediately, but obviously I don't think that means tomorrow. There are some things that I think can be implemented fairly quickly, like pausing notifications on Teen accounts or minor accounts during the nighttime. I would say that my expectation is that all of these things are implemented within the next 30 days," Murrill said.

Murrill says the settlement total will climb to $17.1 billion, in which Louisiana would then receive an additional $67 million, if Snap, TikTok, and YouTube enter similar deals with similar injunctive and monetary relief.

The AG is also taking action against Snapchat and Discord, saying the apps don't provide a safe environment for children. Murrill said, "It used to be that a parent could finally go to sleep at night once their child was at home and in bed. Now, through platforms like Snapchat and Discord, the predator is already in their bedroom—on their phone, gaming device, or tablet."