Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, went on federal trial a few weeks ago. Some 47 states had accused it of marketing addictive and harmful products to young people.

It was an all-encompassing courtroom assault on the social media powerhouse. Meta, valued at $1.47 trillion, warned it might be on the hook for $1.4 trillion.

That is real money, even in Silicon Valley. Since Meta had already lost or settled several social media cases this year, critics and commentators started to wonder: Was this social media’s Big Tobacco moment, a historic occasion when a once-popular pastime gets kicked to the curb by the combined judgments of regulators, courts and activists?

On Wednesday, Meta settled with the states. It will pay up to $17.1 billion over a decade and change its social media properties to make them less compulsive for young people.