Twenty-nine U.S. states have forced a landmark shift in how minors interact with Meta’s platforms. Under an $18 billion settlement, the social media giant will implement mandatory time caps, night-time blackouts, and non-algorithmic feeds for users under 18, pending judicial approval, to curb addictive usage patterns across its apps.
The settlement mandates that Meta enforce a two-hour daily time limit for teenagers, which accounts for cumulative usage across both Facebook and Instagram. Once this threshold is reached, users are locked out unless parental permission is granted. To further discourage prolonged engagement, the company will introduce 15-minute usage prompts and disable autoplay, requiring users to take deliberate action to view subsequent content.
Meta is also introducing a mandatory "Night Mode" that blocks platform access entirely between midnight and 6 a.m. During school hours—defined as 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.—push notifications will be muted, excluding security alerts and direct messages. Furthermore, the company will shift to non-personalized, non-algorithmic feeds by default, while hiding like and reaction counts for all underage accounts.
These restrictions are set to remain in place for a decade. Meta has explicitly tied roughly $5.3 billion of the settlement to the actions of its competitors. The company published an open letter challenging TikTok and YouTube to adopt identical safeguards. If those platforms fail to match these industry-wide commitments, the financial structure of the agreement remains subject to those specific conditions. Meta also plans to enhance its age-verification technology to ensure these protections reach users who may have provided false birth dates.
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