As part of a sweeping child safety settlement with various U.S. attorneys general, Meta is significantly changing the way teenagers use Facebook and Instagram.
Although there are many other changes, one of the bigger ones involve a two-hour time limit. Assuming the setting isn’t turned off by a parent, teens will only be able to use Facebook and Instagram cumulatively for up to two hours per day. This limit will reset at 12:00am each day.
Videos or audio over 22 minutes long, as well as messaging and perusing an app’s settings section, will not count toward the time limit. It remains to be seen if content creators will try to get around this by artificially boosting their content to over 22 minutes long, but the cynic in me says they will try.
Another change is the feed, which has long been a point of discussion since Meta made it based on an algorithm. In four months, the company must provide teens with the “reasonable accessible” option of turning off its recommendation engine.
Meta must notify teens of this change, with parents controlling whether it is the default option.
Then there’s age verification. Under the terms of the settlement, Meta must either continue to develop its own age verification system or adopt a third-party option. Regardless of the system being used, it must detect whether someone is under 13 years old to then remove them from the platform.
If someone is identified to be between 13 and 17, they would then receive teen account protections.
In conjunction with the age verification, Meta must follow stricter data collection policies, create an appeals process that would allow users to potentially change their status as a minor, and allow an independent auditor to review the age verification system.
These are far from the only changes. In addition to mostly blocking use of Facebook and Instagram between midnight and 6:00am, changes also include the option to turn off autoplay, hiding visible likes by default, restricting access to “extreme makeup” filters, muting notifications between 8:00am and 3:00pm by default, and persistent prompts every 15 minutes to stop using Facebook and Instagram.
As part of the settlement, Meta must pay approximately $18 billion over a 10-year period. Most of the money will be allocated to participating states, though the remaining 30 percent would only be allocated if YouTube and TikTok also implement their own daily time limits and pay roughly $5.3 billion.
Most of the changes Meta outlined will be in place for 10 years, after which it’s unknown if the company will keep the changes in place. It should also be noted that Meta brought in around $60 billion in revenue during the second quarter of 2026. Food for thought.
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