Meta to cap teen screen time, add night lockout under $18B settlement

Meta said the new protections will automatically apply to users under 18 on Instagram and Facebook in participating U.S. states and territories, pending judicial approval, with most of the controls required to stay in place for 10 years.

The most notable change is a daily two-hour time limit for teenagers, cumulative across both apps and enforceable even if Meta detects someone using multiple accounts; it can only be disabled with parental permission, and once the limit is hit, teens are locked out of both platforms. Meta is also introducing a default “Night Mode” that blocks underage users from accessing, posting on, or viewing any part of its apps between midnight and 6 a.m. — a step up from the existing practice of simply muting nighttime notifications for teens.

Teens will get prompts every 15 minutes of continuous use on Facebook or Instagram, on top of the existing prompt that appears once daily usage hits 60 minutes. Notifications will also be muted by default during school hours, set as 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., except for DMs and account-security or safety alerts. A new autoplay toggle will let parents and teens require a deliberate tap or swipe before more content plays.

Kids will be able to set a non-personalized, non-algorithmic feed as their default — previously available only as a temporary view teens had to re-select each time they opened the app. Meta is also hiding like and reaction counts by default for underage users, on both their own posts and others’, and expanding its ban on extreme makeup filters, building on an existing restriction on cosmetic-surgery filters. The company said it’s strengthening the technology it uses to identify users who may be 13 to 17 even when they enter an adult birth date.

The $18 billion settlement will be paid out over 10 years, but roughly 30% of it — about $5.3 billion — is contingent on YouTube and TikTok adopting the same limits. Meta published an open letter urging both platforms to match its commitments. “All platforms should empower parents and support teens by putting the same measures in place, because we know that when teens are restricted on one app, they simply move to another,” the company wrote in a blog post.

Meta said it will keep blocking teens from following or interacting with accounts it deems age-inappropriate, keep defaulting teen accounts to private, and continue restricting contact from suspicious adults.

Why it matters

The settlement sets the most detailed child-safety design rules any major platform has accepted, and its financial structure gives Meta a direct incentive to pressure YouTube and TikTok into matching them.