Meta has reached a settlement with US states in an $18B lawsuit accusing the social media giant of deliberately making Instagram addictive to teenagers. The money will be used to fund youth safety initiatives and more, though there is a catch.
More importantly, the company has agreed to introduce unprecedented protections against overuse of its social media apps by teens …
US states have long been pushing for stronger protections against “harmful” algorithmic feeds in social media apps, arguing that companies like Meta deliberately seek to get them addicted to overuse of apps like Instagram. Harmful effects include cyberbullying, pressure to achieve unrealistic body images, and loss of sleep leading to reduced grades at school.
Actions by a growing number of individual states eventually led to a coordinated lawsuit against Meta by attorneys general representing a total of 52 US states, territories, and the District of Columbia. Meta has now agreed to settle the suit and introduce far stronger protections.
The new teen protective measures
Meta listed the new measures, which will automatically apply to under-18s on both Instagram and Facebook:
- Time Limit: A default two-hour daily time limit that teens can only turn off with a parent’s permission. This limit is cumulative across Facebook and Instagram, and time spent scrolling on both apps counts toward the total, including if we detect that someone has multiple accounts.
- Night Mode: A default block from our apps between midnight and 6am. This means teens will not be able to post or view their Feed, Stories, Explore, or Reels, for example.
- School Mode: Notifications will be muted by default between 8 AM and 3 PM. During those hours, teens will no longer receive push notifications, except for direct messages and alerts about their account security or safety.
- Regular Prompts: Teens will receive prompts after every 15 minutes of continuous screen time on Facebook or Instagram. They’ll also receive prompts when their total daily usage hits 60 minutes and 90 minutes. These prompts are designed to encourage intentional use.
- Algorithmic Feed Control: Teens will be able to choose a non-algorithmic feed — one that isn’t personalized by our recommendation systems — as their default. We will periodically remind them of this option, and parents can choose to adjust their teen’s default experience to require this setting.
- Autoplay Control: Teens will be able to turn off autoplay, so that content no longer automatically plays. Instead, they’ll need to take a deliberate action, like a tap or swipe, to see more. Parents can choose to adjust their teen’s default experience to require this setting.
- Hidden Likes: Teens won’t see the number of likes and reactions on posts — both their own and those from others — by default.
- Disabling cosmetic surgery and extreme makeup filters: In addition to our existing policy to block teens from using cosmetic surgery filters, we’ll now block teens from using extreme makeup filters.
- Age Assurance: We work hard to find and remove underage accounts from our apps and, as part of our agreement, we’re investing in even stronger technology to proactively catch accounts that may belong to under-13s. We’re also strengthening the technology we use to identify accounts that may be between the ages of 13 and 17, so we can ensure those accounts are placed in experiences designed for teens, even if they give us an adult birthday. However, to ensure teens are consistently protected across the many apps they use, app stores must provide developers with verified age information. This will allow platforms to put age-appropriate protections in place for as many teens as possible. That’s why we’ll continue to advocate for legislation that empowers parents by requiring app stores to verify age and obtain parental approval before a teen downloads an app.
- Age-appropriate content restrictions: We will maintain our current content standards so that, by default, teens are placed into 13+ content settings, inspired by movie ratings criteria and parent feedback. We will also continue to prevent teens from following or interacting with accounts we consider age-inappropriate. We will work to continually improve these systems to ensure age-appropriate content experiences for teens.
- Unwanted contact from strangers: We will maintain our current practices of defaulting teens into private accounts on Instagram and private default settings on Facebook, and we’ll continue to restrict potentially suspicious adults from contacting them. We will also strengthen our efforts to make it harder for those adults to find, follow, or interact with teens.
- Reporting and ongoing protection from harmful content: We will continue to give teens easy ways to report content that concerns them, and we’ll work to improve our response times. We will also continue our work to protect teens from potentially harmful experiences by regularly evaluating how often teens are exposed to them. We’ll draw on research and expert input to improve our work.
- Strengthening our parental controls: We will encourage parents to set up our supervision tools and give them new controls and insights. This includes notifying parents when a teen links a secondary account, alerting them to interactions with potentially suspicious accounts, and providing periodic updates on their teen’s usage and any changes their teen attempts to make to their protective settings.
$18B payout, with two conditions
Meta provisionally agreed to pay $18 billion to US states, but said only 70% of it is guaranteed. It says the remaining 30% will be conditional on YouTube and TikTok implementing similar measures and making similar contributions.
- YouTube and TikTok implement a one-hour Daily Limit, Night Mode, and age assurance measures.
- YouTube and TikTok each pay an amount matching the 30% figure, with half of the remaining funds tied to YouTube’s payment and half tied to TikTok’s.
The company also says that its time limit and night mode features are only guaranteed for five years unless YouTube and TikTok implement the same limits
9to5Mac’s Take
It’s taken coordinated action by US states to achieve what the federal government has been unable to. These protections have the potential to be genuinely meaningful, but that does rely on them being properly enforced: teens have previously been able to circumvent many earlier measures.
While this agreement only applies in the US, we can be sure that regulators around the world will be seeking to obtain similar protections for teens in their own countries. It seems likely that Meta will eventually be forced to implement these limits worldwide, and it’s disappointing – if not remotely surprising – that it has not done so on a voluntary basis.
What’s your take on the deal? Please share in the comments.
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