Time limits to midnight cutoff: What Meta's $18 billion deal changes for teens

Meta Platforms has agreed to pay up to $18 billion and roll out sweeping child-safety changes to Facebook and Instagram, as part of a landmark settlement that ended a federal trial over teen social media addiction, according to a report by the Associated Press.

The deal, reached Wednesday, resolves claims filed by 48 US states, Washington DC and several territories, and caps a case years in the making that sought to hold Meta accountable for its platforms' role in undermining children's mental health.

Also read: What Meta agreed to in US teen safety settlement


New Mexico and Florida are the only two jurisdictions not part of the settlement. New Mexico went to trial separately and won its case earlier this year, while Florida's attorney general said the deal wasn't tough enough on Meta.

What Meta has agreed to

Under the settlement, Meta will strengthen age-verification technology to keep children under 13 off its platforms and ensure teens are placed in age-appropriate accounts, using a mix of its own and third-party tools with regular independent audits. If a user is identified as under 13 and removed, Meta will also check the ages of that user's friends.

Other changes include a default two-hour daily time limit for users under 18 that can only be turned off with parental permission, a block on app access between midnight and 6 am, and the removal of "like" counts, per the report. Meta will also eliminate push notifications during weekday school hours. Some features, such as turning off autoplay or switching to a chronological feed, will remain opt-in rather than default.

A payout tied to rivals' action

In an unusual structure, Meta will pay only 70% of the settlement, around $12.6 billion, unless TikTok and YouTube also agree to impose default one-hour daily time limits for underage users and pay roughly $5.3 billion each to the states. Meta will pay the remaining 30%, also about $5.3 billion, only if the other two platforms sign on to similar terms.

Payouts will be distributed over a decade, with California potentially receiving around $2.2 billion, while New York and Texas are also expected to see substantial shares. The states involved had originally sought close to $200 billion in civil penalties, more than 200 times what Meta was ordered to pay after losing its separate trial against New Mexico earlier this year, where it was fined $375 million and ordered to set up a $567 million abatement fund.

Reactions are mixed

California attorney general Rob Bonta said the agreement institutes real change, transparency and protections for children and teens nationwide. Colorado attorney general Phil Weiser called the relief meaningful and beyond what any court had ordered.

But critics say the deal doesn't go far enough. Florida attorney general James Uthmeier called the payout "peanuts" compared with the harm caused by Meta's addictive features, and said Florida would pursue its own accountability efforts. Josh Golin, executive director of online safety nonprofit Fairplay, said the settlement was too focused on parental tools rather than restricting harmful features outright, criticising it for not disabling recommendation algorithms by default.

Also read: From Australia to Europe, countries move to curb children's social media access

Arturo Bejar, a former Meta engineering director who testified in the trial, called the settlement a "significant milestone" but cautioned parents shouldn't see Instagram as suddenly safe, since Meta still gets to define what counts as harm. Yael Eisenstat, director of policy and impact at the Cybersafety Research Center, said it was premature to know if all the intended changes would actually materialise, adding that fixing the underlying problem will require a mix of technical solutions, market forces and regulation.

What's next

The settlement must still be approved by a judge. Even if approved, it won't end Meta's legal troubles: the company continues to face thousands of lawsuits from individual plaintiffs and school districts alleging harm from its platforms' design, built on a novel product-liability legal argument.

(With inputs from AP)