Meta's child-safety deal depends on age checks that still don't work well

Meta reached the settlement Wednesday with a group of 52 attorneys general, without admitting wrongdoing, over allegations it intentionally designed Instagram and Facebook to keep children hooked. Technology litigator Jessica Nall of Withers told TechCrunch the deal hands the states a political win while its real financial impact is softer than the headline number suggests — Meta reported more than $200 billion in total revenue in 2025, and the settlement is paid out over 10 years. Nall said avoiding a jury trial and a legal finding on First Amendment and Section 230 questions was a wise move for Meta, given how existential that ruling could be for any tech company whose product engages users.

The bigger story, though, is what Meta now has to build: the most detailed child-safety rules any major platform has accepted, including a default two-hour daily screen-time limit, 15-minute usage prompts, an overnight lockout between midnight and 6 a.m., muted notifications during school hours, and hidden “like” counts for minors. Nearly all of it depends on Meta correctly identifying which accounts belong to minors in the first place.

That’s where the settlement runs into a known weak point. “The design changes that were proposed in the settlement seem great on paper, but they are all reliant upon successful, effective, and unbiased age verification technology,” said Dr. Alexis Ingber, a communications professor at Syracuse University, noting that current methods for telling a child from an adult “by and large… have failed.” Existing approaches — biometric scans, government ID checks, and behavioral-pattern analysis — each carry flaws: behavioral analysis can misjudge age in either direction, while ID and biometric checks require handing sensitive documents to a third party. Discord had to delay its own global age-verification rollout earlier this year after user backlash.

Not every expert is as pessimistic. Philip Yannella of Blank Rome said age-assurance technology has improved significantly in recent years and that companies don’t need to retain personal information to use it — a verification token can flag an account as belonging to a minor without keeping the underlying ID data. Still, transmitting sensitive identity information at all carries risk: a breach of ID scans or facial biometrics tied to minors could enable identity theft in a way a leaked password never could.

Why it matters

Roughly 30% of Meta’s settlement payment is contingent on TikTok and YouTube adopting the same limits, meaning the reliability of age-verification technology across the industry — not just at Meta — will determine whether these design changes actually protect kids or mainly generate new privacy exposure.