Meta announced a proposed US child-safety settlement that would impose broad restrictions and new parental controls for Facebook and Instagram users under 18. The agreement still needs final approval before any of the measures take effect.
According to reports from MacRumors and The Verge, the company would give teens a combined two-hour daily limit across the two services. Parents could override that cap, receive periodic usage reports, and get alerts tied to linked secondary accounts or suspicious interactions.
The plan would restrict teen use throughout the day
The apps would block posting and content viewing between midnight and 6 a.m. A planned school mode would mute notifications from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., while reminders would appear after 15 continuous minutes and after 60 and 90 minutes of daily use.
Young users could switch to feeds without algorithmic personalization, and parents could require that choice. They could turn off autoplay; parents could keep it off. The platforms would hide likes and reactions by default and prevent teens from using cosmetic-surgery or extreme-makeup filters.
Direct messages sit outside the proposed controls. The time cap would not count messaging, and the overnight and school settings would leave it available.
The settlement puts money behind youth-safety claims
The deal follows a nationwide lawsuit alleging that Meta, Google, TikTok and Snap failed to protect children and designed their services to encourage excessive use. It involves attorneys general from US states and territories, and the company also plans stronger efforts to identify under-13 users and provide age-specific experiences for 13- to 17-year-olds.
The company said it would pay about $18 billion to states over 10 years for online youth-safety initiatives. It would hold back $5.3 billion unless TikTok and YouTube adopt comparable protections; it has asked each rival for one-hour daily limits, nighttime restrictions, age-assurance tools and a $5.3 billion payment.
That condition makes the settlement a test of whether large social platforms will face a shared baseline for teen protections, rather than a single service bearing the cost. The case targets design practices alleged to drive excessive use, so limits on recommendations, engagement signals and access hours reach beyond a standard parental-control update.
Final approval, an implementation date, and the responses from TikTok and YouTube remain unsettled. The company has also not detailed how it would verify ages or enforce the rules across accounts.
