Meta has agreed to settle a high-profile case involving children’s privacy and their addiction to social media. The company will pay up to $18 billion and make changes to its platforms to address claims from dozens of states that it designed Facebook and Instagram to create addiction among young users and collect personal data about children. A court must still approve the proposed settlement, in which Meta denied any wrongdoing.
Among other things, Meta agreed to set a default daily limit of two hours for users under the age of 18. Only a parent can increase these limits. It will block apps aimed at young users between midnight and 6 a.m. by default (a parent can also adjust these limits). It pledged to provide “clear prompts and notifications to teens every 15 minutes of continuous screen time” and to remind teens when they used its apps for cumulative totals of 60 and 90 minutes each day.
The company notably announced that it would reduce the daily hour limit to one hour and extend the nighttime blackout between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. if its competitors agreed to do the same. “We want to ensure that teenagers benefit from this new industry standard, but we can’t do it alone,” Meta said. “These protections will only be truly effective if we work with our peers – TikTok and YouTube – to put the same measures in place.”
The company added that it would pay 70% of the $18 billion settlement over 10 years – that money would help fund states’ online safety programs for young people. Meta said it would only pay out the remaining 30% (about $5.3 billion) if YouTube and TikTok matched that amount and agreed to a one-hour daily time limit for young users, nightly blocking of their apps and the use of age-guarantee measures.
Additionally, Meta will block notifications for those under 18 at night and during school hours “except for direct messages and alerts regarding the security or safety of their account”; no longer display the number of likes or reactions on the publications they see; and ban “extreme makeup filters” in addition to the existing block on cosmetic surgery filters.
Meta will give under-18s a way to view a non-algorithmic feed on Facebook and Instagram (i.e. posts from accounts they actually follow) and “periodically remind” them of this option. The company will allow parents and guardians to enable non-algorithmic feed on their teens’ accounts by default. Teens will be able to turn off autoplay, requiring them to tap or swipe on a video to play it. Again, parents can enable this setting by default.
Regarding harmful content, Meta has agreed to deploy “an improved mechanism” for teenagers to report such content. The company has committed to responding to 90% of these reports within six hours.
The settlement states that Meta will do more to identify whether an account is used by anyone under the age of 18 and to remove under-13s from its platforms. The company will use an independent auditor to monitor these practices. Additionally, Meta “will be subject to an injunction prohibiting it from making any further false, misleading, or misleading statements regarding its security features,” according to California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office.
Following a two-year investigation, Bonta and dozens of other attorneys general sued Meta in 2023. They alleged that the company “designed and deployed harmful and psychologically manipulative product features to incentivize young users into compulsive and extensive use of the platform, while falsely assuring the public that its features were safe and suitable for young users.” They claimed Meta violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by knowingly collecting children’s personal data without parental consent and using it to train its generative AI and machine learning models.
The case went to trial this month. The two sides reached an agreement before Instagram chief Adam Mosseri returned to the helm on Wednesday.
Advocacy groups welcomed the settlement, but still say more needs to be done. “This is a watershed moment for the growing movement to protect children from addictive and dangerous social media. In addition to a significant financial penalty, state attorneys general have secured the largest injunction ever granted to Meta, including a number of measures to protect young people’s sleep, such as disabling Instagram overnight for minors’ accounts,” Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay for Kids, told Woozad.
“But even with this agreement, there remains a long way to go to protect children on social media, including on Meta’s platforms. We are disappointed that the agreement does not by default turn off the recommendation algorithms that connect children to predators and send young people down dangerous rabbit holes,” Golin added. “In general, the regulation is too focused on providing tools for parents rather than restricting harmful features. It also relies heavily on encouraging users to take breaks, and we are skeptical of its effectiveness.”
“Social media has been an uncontrolled experiment on our children, and the public is outraged: We let social media companies conduct a massive, uncontrolled experiment on a generation of children – and it took more than a decade for the mental health consequences to fully manifest,” James P. Steyer, founder and CEO of Common Sense Media, said in a statement.
“The product changes included in the settlement are excellent, including restricting notifications during nighttime and school days, turning off likes by default, eliminating beauty filters, and usage time limits,” Steyer continued. “But it’s still better to put as much into law as possible, and that makes the pending bills in California – AB 2 and AB 1709 – even more important. We need to make sure that all social media companies with addictive features get in line, not just Meta. And we need to make sure that any negative features that exist and might be invented in the future are kept out of reach of children.”
Update, August 26 at 4:06 p.m. ET: Added commentary from Fairplay for Kids and Common Sense Media.
