ISLAMABAD: Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has agreed to prevent teens in the US from using its apps at night and to impose a default daily limit of two hours on their cumulative usage across the company's family of apps.

The measures are part of a historic $16.7 billion settlement with 29 US states over claims that Meta deliberately engineered its platforms to hook young users, misled the public about the risks and unlawfully collected data from children under 13.

The agreement will apply only to teenagers in those signatory states and will have no effect internationally.

California led a coalition of states that accused Meta of designing Instagram and Facebook to hook minors, harvest their data and deceive the public.

Fifty-one states and territories, plus Washington, DC, initially settled with Meta. Texas reached a separate agreement with the company, increasing the total payout to around $18 billion.

The changes to how young people use its apps go further than anything Meta has accepted before, following years of criticism from parents and experts over the effects of the world’s biggest social media platforms on children.

Instagram boss Adam Mosseri took the stand on Tuesday and admitted he touted newly launched safety tools for teens without disclosing low adoption rates from early testing several years ago.

Impact on teens

The main terms of the settlement include a nighttime block. Within six months, teenage accounts would, by default, be locked out of Facebook and Instagram from midnight to 6 a.m. local time.

Messaging and settings would remain available but be stripped down so teens cannot use them to reach the wider app. Push notifications would be switched off from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.

Teen accounts would also default to a two-hour daily cumulative limit across Meta’s apps, resetting at midnight. Messaging and long-form video would not count toward the total.

A teenager can change neither the curfew nor the cap without a parent’s approval, and the limits can be tightened.

If competing platforms adopt equivalent commitments, the overnight block would be extended from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., while the daily allowance would drop to 60 minutes per app, capped at two hours across all apps.

Meta has one year to deploy an accurate age-assurance system. Age-checking tools must misclassify no more than 3% of 13- to 15-year-olds as adults and no more than 10% of 16- and 17-year-olds as adults.

New accounts whose age remains unverified after 14 days will be treated as teen accounts, regardless of the stated age.

Parents supervising a teen account would receive daily time-spent notifications, prompts to review settings and the ability to adjust school hours.

Meta must also respond to teens reporting illegal or offensive content within six hours in at least 90% of cases filed in English or Spanish.

Global call

But anger over the impact of Instagram and Facebook, as well as rival apps like Snapchat and TikTok, has driven the spread of age limits and school phone bans worldwide.

This settlement could be the start of a wave that will ripple across the social media industry, putting TikTok, YouTube and Snap under pressure to make similar changes to their apps for teens.

The United Nations also called Thursday for child-safe design across the social media industry.

"Children should not have to wait for a lawsuit to be safe online," UN rights chief Volker Türk said on X.

The EU added that it expects Meta to address "addictive" features of its platforms in Europe.

Parts of the settlement hinge on whether those three companies, referred to as "Core Industry Members" in a legal filing, take similar action.

The settlement payment schedule provides for 10 annual instalments. California, the largest recipient, is due $1.5 billion to $2.1 billion over the decade, followed by New York with up to $1.13 billion.

The filing states that the agreement does not amount to an admission of liability or wrongdoing by Meta, which has consistently denied the allegations. It requires court approval to take effect.

“It’s the right path forward for our whole industry, but this framework will only work if all our peers join us,” Meta Chief Legal Officer C.J. Mahoney said in a statement.

Teenagers

What Meta’s social media block means for US teens