Earlier this week, tech giant Meta reached a settlement with Attorneys General of 47 states. Meta agreed to pay a record $17 billion for what the AGs alleged was intentionally designing Instagram and Facebook to be addictive for young people, harming their mental health, and misleading the public about the dangers.

As part of the settlement, Meta did not admit any wrongdoing and agreed to implement changes to platforms to protect children and empower parents. The $17 billion will be divided between the states, and Tennessee’s share will be approximately $752 million. Those funds cannot be deposited into the general fund to allocate as the state sees fit. In anticipation of a settlement, the Tennessee General Assembly created the Children’s Digital Protection Fund, which requires the proceeds to be spent in the following ways:

Overall, this is good news for the state and for parents, teens, and the providers of mental health services, including the 148 school districts. History, however, requires caution and an ample amount of pessimism. While governors and the legislature often say the right things about mental health resources for teens and young adults, addressing those issues has been far short of impressive.

In 2021, Governor Lee included $250 million in the state’s budget to establish the K-12 Mental Health Endowment. The funds are invested by the State Treasurer and currently total $257 million. The legislation, like most endowments, does not allow the state to spend any of the original $250 million, known as the corpus. The management committee may only allocate the interest earned on the investment. Since 2023, between $ 6 and $ 7 million annually has been provided for mental health programs. These funds are important to the programs and providers serving children and families, but they are a drop in the bucket compared to the need.

The American School Counselors Association determined that the ideal ratio of school mental health counselors to students should be 1:250. In Tennessee, the ratio is 1:429 with only 8 of 148 school districts meeting the standard. The state’s answer in part was the creation of the School-Based Behavioral Health Liaisons, which are professionals from private mental health providers contracted to serve local schools. This has resulted in a lower overall ratio of counselor to student and service providers in schools where there was previously no counselor.

Attorney General Skrmetti’s office, in its suit, used Meta’s own data and research against them. The AG cited Meta’s claim that Instagram had “fully ‘saturated’ the market for Tennesseans under 35 years of age, and that Meta found that it had “fully ‘penetrated’ the teenage market in Tennessee.” The brief goes on to cite a U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory that explains, “excessive and problematic social media use, such as compulsive or uncontrollable use, has been linked to sleep problems, attention problems, and feelings of exclusion among adolescents,” and that it can cause changes in brain structure, altered neurological development, depressive symptoms, suicidal thoughts and behaviors, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and depression, anxiety and neuroticism.”

While social media is not the cause of every teen mental health issue, the conditions described in the Surgeon General’s Advisory do not just disappear because Meta agrees to more restrictive guardrails on its platforms. A Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth report from last year reveals nearly 43% of high school students report feeling sad or hopeless. Twenty-eight percent say their mental health is most of the time or always “not good.” One in four reported engaging in non-suicidal self-harm within the last 12 months. Nineteen percent reported making a plan about how they would die by suicide within the next 12 months.

The Meta settlement can be great news for the state and for teens and families struggling with what can only be called an epidemic of mental health challenges. However, the next governor and the legislature must quickly and efficiently convene experts who can develop a comprehensive plan to address many of the mental health gaps. Most importantly, they must commit to recurring funds for these resources when the Meta money runs out.