Meta reaches landmark settlement over teen social media harm

For a while now, multiple studies have attempted to demonstrate how social media apps can have a detrimental impact on teen mental health. Meta-owned platforms like Instagram and Facebook have been at the center of discussions about the negative impact on children, and that’s led to some high-profile lawsuits. Today, Meta is ending one long legal battle by announcing a settlement with 52 attorneys general.

In a statement on its blog, Meta said it will pay around $18 billion as part of the settlement to fund youth online safety initiatives, along with other state activities. It further announced a long list of teen-safety features it will bundle into Facebook and Instagram, while also making some options the default for all teens. Notably, the company has denied any wrongdoing in this major settlement.

Among the measures adopted by Meta is a default 2-hour limit on Facebook and Instagram, with time spent scrolling across either app counting toward the combined limit. Meta mentions the “night mode” function, which disables the feed, Stories, and Reels between 12 AM and 6 AM. A similar mode is also in place for school time, which will mute Facebook and Instagram push notifications between 8 AM and 3 PM.

Crucially, the company notes that direct messaging will remain available during night mode, school mode, and the 2-hour limit “to stay connected with friends and family.” Furthermore, Meta says it will let teens turn off the algorithm-based feed and disable autoplay for content on these platforms.

Additionally, the company is blocking “extreme makeup filters,” while teens will also get prompts after 15 minutes of continuous screen time on either platform. The prompts will also appear after 60 and 90 minutes. Some of these options were already implemented by the two platforms over the past few years in response to growing concern over deteriorating teen mental health.

On top of these measures, the social media giant is reportedly working on “stronger technology” to accurately detect accounts of under-13 users with falsified ages. It is also reportedly improving tech to better identify account owners between the ages of 13 and 17.

To make age detection easier, Meta urges app stores to provide verified age information so that social media platforms can tailor their experiences accordingly.

Meta agrees to shell out $18 billion, but with conditions

The company intends to pay out $12.7 billion to eligible states over the next decade in annual installments. However, the remaining $5.3 billion, or 30%, is tied to TikTok and Google-owned YouTube also adopting some of these measures.

These include implementing a one-hour daily limit on the use of those apps among teens, a nighttime cutoff, and measures to detect accounts of children with falsified age info. The second condition Meta imposed is that both TikTok and YouTube make a payment matching the 30% figure.

Additional input from Reuters reveals that $17.6 billion of the total amount will go to 48 US states, as well as Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Meanwhile, $459 million will be set aside for settling the Cambridge Analytica privacy claims from nearly a decade ago. The state of California will seemingly receive the largest payout at $2.2 billion, the report adds.

Some of the default behaviors implemented by Meta on both platforms will go a long way toward keeping teens away from its evidently addictive platforms. However, some of these problems cannot be truly solved until all platforms take these steps, just as Meta suggested. It will be interesting to see if TikTok and YouTube respond to the company’s call and put similar restrictions in place on their respective apps.