Young people using Instagram and Facebook will face sweeping new restrictions under an $18 billion settlement Meta reached with 48 U.S. states Wednesday. The agreement, which still requires court approval, would force Meta to introduce stronger protections for users under 18, including a two-hour daily limit and an overnight shutdown between midnight and 6 a.m. Meta will also hide “like” counts for younger users and strengthen technology designed to identify children's ages, prevent those under 13 from using its platforms and automatically place teenagers into age-appropriate accounts.
The $18 billion settlement will be paid over a decade and represents a major shift in how Meta manages younger users on its platforms. But child-safety advocates warned parents not to assume the platforms will immediately become safe. Arturo Béjar, a former Meta engineering director who testified as the first witness in the federal trial before the settlement cut proceedings short, called the agreement a “significant milestone” but said it leaves major concerns unresolved.
He argued that restricting teenagers to two hours a day does not address concerns about the recommendation systems determining what they see during that time. Béjar also urged Meta to tackle design features that he said can leave teenagers wanting to continue using the platforms even after reaching their daily limit. A central part of the settlement targets Meta's ability to determine how old its users actually are.
Meta already uses artificial intelligence to identify children who may have lied about their age, including under-13s attempting to create accounts and teenagers posing as adults. But critics have questioned how reliably those systems work. Under the agreement, Meta will upgrade its age-verification technology using its own and third-party systems, with independent audits used to measure their effectiveness.
The settlement also establishes targets aimed at reducing the number of minors incorrectly identified as adults. If Meta discovers and removes an under-13 user, it will also examine the ages of people on that user's friends list. Federal children's privacy law generally requires parental consent before online services knowingly collect personal information from children under 13, and Meta's platforms set 13 as their minimum account age.
Béjar testified last week that Meta previously operated what he described as a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to underage users, despite possessing sophisticated technology capable of detecting suspicious accounts. Many of the new protections will be automatically activated rather than requiring teenagers or their parents to find and enable them. Users under 18 will face a default two-hour daily limit that cannot be disabled without parental approval.
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