Teen accounts will be blocked from Meta platforms between midnight and 6am. Photo / Getty Images
A landmark US$18 billion ($30b) settlement will force Meta to implement a suite of changes that will shift how teens use Instagram and Facebook. The new measures, which include screen time limits and a default ban on activity during late nights and school hours, are designed to protect teens from
excessive use.
Here’s how the changes could affect teens’ experience on the platforms.
As part of the settlement, teen-specific accounts will be blocked from using Meta platforms from midnight to 6am. They will also be limited to two hours a day of use across Instagram and Facebook, with some exceptions like messaging and long-form content. Meta has also promised to detect teens’ use across multiple accounts, tallying up their total and locking them out after they hit a limit. Teens can override the rules with parental approval.
Teen accounts will also come with default pauses on notifications during school hours and overnight, from 10pm-7am. Nighttime notifications are already paused on Instagram for users under 16.
The settlement might include even stronger restrictions if YouTube and TikTok, two major competitors to Meta, agree to adopt new protections as well. If that occurs, the screen time limit could go down to just 60 minutes a day.
Under the terms of the settlement, Meta has committed to responding to complaints made in English and Spanish about harmful content within six hours in at least 90% of cases. In January 2025, the company scaled back third-party fact-checkers in the United States that helped vet misleading or harmful content in favour of user-driven flags. It’s not clear how Meta will respond to a large volume of content claims in a short time period.
For teen accounts specifically, Meta has agreed to maintain its current restrictions on age-appropriate content and accounts.
The settlement includes additional measures to identify users under 13, who are not permitted on Meta’s platforms, as well as those under 18 who are eligible for teen accounts. This has long been a challenge for social media companies.
“Teenagers are very creative, and they’re highly motivated to access things that they are not supposed to be accessing,” said Alice Marwick, the director of research at Data & Society.
Additionally, Meta has agreed that an independent auditor will monitor its compliance with the agreement, including models to detect the presence of young users.
Some regulators have attempted to limit social media companies’ ability to offer algorithmically personalised content to users, often in the form of an “Explore” or “For You” page. The agreement stops short of banning those pages for minors, which at least one state legislature has attempted to block. But it gives under-18 users an option to have a non-personalised feed that is ordered chronologically, which advocates hope will help cut down on endless scrolling.
“It’s great to see an option for a chronological feed,” said Haley Hinkle, the policy counsel for Fairplay, an advocacy organisation for child online privacy and safety. “But in general, what this does not address is … placing strict limits around offering minors a personalised recommendation algorithm. … That is a huge driver of excessive time online.”
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