So long, continuous scroll? Meta settlement promises app changes for teens

Red and blue states don’t agree on much these days — except that unrestricted social media access is harming kids’ health. And they just got a big win. 

Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, agreed to pay up to $17.1 billion in penalties and implement restrictions for young users on their social media platforms as a part of a legal settlement with 51 states and territories. 

The settlement comes a week after the case’s trial started in California and stems from a 2023 lawsuit. State attorneys general said the social media giant targeted underage users to maximize their use of the platform for profit — often to the detriment of teens’ mental and physical health. A separate settlement with Texas brings the total closer to $18 billion. 

Concerns about social media use and kids’ health are widespread. Although experts say social media can provide some positive experiences for youth, the potential harms are serious and numerous: body dissatisfaction, social comparison, exposure to hateful or violent content, reduced sleep or addictive behaviors, to name a few. 

“What most all parents have witnessed is that kids are spending a remarkably large proportion of their free time on social media,” said Mitch Prinstein, psychologist and co-director of the Winston Center on Technology and Brain Development at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, who was prepared to testify as an expert in the case. “Kids are reporting that they’re having an extremely hard time controlling their own behavior on there. They can’t quit. It’s interfering with their daily rules and routines, their sleep, their homework, their hygiene.”

The states’ legal complaint highlighted specific app features as harmful for kids, including body-altering filters, “like” counts and disruptive notifications during school and nighttime hours. The complaint also argued that Meta was aware of underage users on its platforms but had not taken sufficient action to remove them.

In addition to the financial payout (around 30% of which is contingent on YouTube and TikTok adopting similar screen time restrictions), what changes did Meta promise? And how are health and tech policy experts reacting? Here’s a breakdown.

New screen-time limits and parental controls

The vast majority of the changes Meta agreed to apply to users ages 13 to 17, as the company’s policies already prohibit children younger than 13 from using the platforms. By the settlement’s terms, Meta said it will make the following changes within a year:

• Limit total daily use to two hours across both Facebook and Instagram. 
• Prompt users to pause after every continuous 15 minutes they’re on the platforms.
• Block access to the apps from midnight to 6 a.m. If other platforms such as TikTok and YouTube adopt similar policies, Meta would extend the  lockout time from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.
• Mute notifications by default from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. during weekdays during the school year to minimize disruptions during school hours. 

Parents can choose to override these features for their child’s account. 

For psychologist Jean Twenge, author of “10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World,” these changes are common sense.

“Teens should not be using social media in the middle of the night, at school, or for so many hours a day that it crowds out time for talking with friends and family, going outside, exercising, and sleeping,” Twenge said. 

But it’s not just cumulative time in the app that can be harmful — health experts are also worried about specific design elements.

Pediatrician Dr. Megan Moreno, co-director of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ initiative on social media and youth mental health, said features such as the platforms’ infinite scroll, visible “like” counts and promotion of harmful “trending” content like dangerous challenges are considerable hazards.

These elements, designed to keep users hooked, “really unfairly take advantage of biological vulnerabilities of our teenagers,” Prinstein said.

Adolescent brains are hypersensitive to social attention, but don’t develop impulse control till much later. “When you have a machine and a platform that allows you to press a button 24/7 to get likes and comments and notifications and endless scroll, it’s just a perfect storm for adolescents who will be really trapped.”

The settlement requires Meta to change several of these features:

• Teens have the option to switch to a non-algorithmic feed, meaning one that isn’t personalized by Meta’s recommendations based on the data it has collected about the user. 
• Teens can choose to turn off the video autoplay feature. 
• Teens won’t be able to see the number of likes or reactions to their posts. 
• Teens will be blocked from using camera filters that mimic extreme makeup or make the user look like they received cosmetic surgery.

Parents will also be able to turn these features on and off for their teens. 

These promised product updates build on the new “teen accounts” feature that Meta launched in 2024 for users ages 13 to 17. 

Teen accounts already have some guardrails around them: They are automatically private, which means the teen has to accept a friend request before that contact can see the posts on the teen account. And the teen’s account can be supervised by a parent account. Meta also says it restricts teen accounts’ access to sensitive content that may contain violent or explicit imagery and limits who can message or interact with teen accounts. Parents can see their child’s activity, who they are messaging (not the messages themselves) and set time limits for usage or specific time blocks.

The settlement adds more features to that parental supervision — for example, allowing parents to be notified when a teen is messaged by a “potentially suspicious account,” or tries to update account settings.

Making sure users are as old as they say they are

Twenge said the most important part of the settlement was Meta’s promise to improve how it verifies users’ ages.

In 2021, 38% of 10- to 12-year-olds surveyed by Common Sense Media reported using social media. Reporting on the trial, The Seattle Times said that Meta’s own internal estimates showed that 20% of 11-year-olds and 30% of 12-year-olds were on Instagram.

“None of the protections will work if kids and teens can just choose a birth year that makes them 18 or otherwise evade age assurance,” Twenge said.

In addition to asking for users’ birthdates, Meta currently uses artificial intelligence to detect teen users who may be trying to skirt the rules.

“For example, this technology helps us prevent teens from accessing Facebook Dating, adults from messaging teens, and helps teens from receiving restricted ad content,” Meta spokesperson Stephanie Otway told PolitiFact in an email.

As part of the settlement, Meta agreed to improve how it detects teen and underage accounts and create features preventing users from circumventing the restrictions. Meta will be required to report to an independent auditor and meet certain thresholds of success in underage account detection. 

The settlement doesn’t require that all users provide proof of age when they sign up, but if the AI detection miscategorizes an adult as a teen, the adult may need to provide proof of age to appeal the decision. 

The Age Verification Providers Association, an industry trade group, praised the settlement. “For the first time, a major social media platform has agreed to deploy independently certified age assurance technology meeting defined accuracy standards,” said Iain Corby, the association’s executive director. 

Others, like Santa Clara University Law professor Eric Goldman, see age verification requirements as a worrisome breach of privacy, requiring users to hand over too much personal data to tech companies. 

What tech and health experts think of the changes

Health experts and advocates for tech industry accountability had mixed reactions to the settlement. 

Doctors and psychologists we spoke with were cautious but hopeful that the changes could help kids disconnect from the platforms, get better sleep and adopt healthier habits — even if they wished for more regulation. 

Others were more critical. Former Meta employee and whistleblower Jason Sattizahn told NPR the agreement didn’t call for any mechanism to measure whether the tools will make a difference for teen anxiety or addiction.

Katharina Kopp, policy director at the Center for Digital Democracy, said the settlement didn’t go far enough to address Meta’s structure, which profits from advertising. The payout represents a small fraction of Meta’s annual revenue of over $200 billion in 2025.

“The settlement reaches the features of Meta’s platforms but not the engine that drives them,” she said.

Several experts called on the states and federal government to do more to regulate the industry to apply the restrictions across other social media platforms. Meta made $5 billion of the state settlement payout contingent upon industry-wide buy-in.