Meta's sweeping new teen restrictions face first test as U.S. parents warn two-hour limit does not fix social media harms
WASHINGTON — Meta's sweeping new restrictions on teenagers' use of Facebook and Instagram are being welcomed by American parents as a significant shift in how one of the world's largest technology companies treats young users, but families and teenagers say the measures may still leave the deeper problems of social-media addiction, artificial content and easy movement between platforms unresolved. The changes follow an $18 billion settlement arising from U.S. states' litigation over alleged harms to children and impose a two-hour combined daily limit across Facebook and Instagram, block most app access between midnight and 6 a.m., mute most notifications during school hours and introduce stronger parental controls. Meta did not admit wrongdoing in reaching the settlement.
The agreement, reached with a bipartisan group of 52 attorneys general across U.S. states, territories and the District of Columbia, represents a substantial expansion of Meta's existing Teen Accounts system. Under-18 users in participating jurisdictions will automatically face the two-hour cumulative daily limit across Facebook and Instagram and will need parental permission to disable it. Meta will also send prompts after every 15 minutes of continuous use and additional alerts after users reach 60 and 90 minutes in a day. Between midnight and 6 a.m., teens will be unable to browse feeds, Stories, Explore or Reels, while most push notifications will be silenced between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. Direct messaging is excluded from those restrictions so teenagers can continue communicating with friends and family. Most terms are required to remain in place for a decade.
The settlement goes considerably beyond limiting time. Likes and reaction counts will be hidden from teenagers by default, teens will be able to select a non-personalised feed, autoplay can be disabled, and Meta will block cosmetic-surgery and extreme-makeup filters for young users. The company also agreed to strengthen technology designed to identify users who falsely claim to be adults and to improve parental alerts when teens create secondary accounts or interact with potentially suspicious users. Those measures directly target several mechanisms critics have long associated with social pressure and compulsive engagement rather than merely restricting the number of minutes teenagers spend online.
Yet interviews with American families suggest the settlement has not resolved a fundamental trust problem. Houston mother Elizabeth Cardner told the BBC the controls would probably reduce arguments at home but said they did not go far enough. Her 14-year-old daughter Paige welcomed restrictions on likes and appearance filters but questioned how durable those protections would be as artificial-intelligence tools become more sophisticated and users find alternative ways to alter images and videos. Cardner also described the dilemma confronting many parents: removing social media completely can isolate children from peers whose friendships and communication increasingly operate online, while allowing access exposes them to risks parents feel increasingly unable to control.
Other parents questioned whether Meta's reforms address the product design that critics say created the problem. Massachusetts mother Andria Rose told the BBC that she considered the new restrictions positive but insufficient, pointing to her own difficulty disengaging from social media as evidence of how powerful those systems can become for children. Long Island mother Joanie Story criticised a provision linking part of Meta's settlement commitments to whether competing platforms adopt comparable restrictions. Their reactions highlight a distinction likely to shape the next phase of the child-safety debate: whether governments should primarily regulate how long children use social media, or the algorithms, recommendation systems and engagement mechanisms determining what happens during that time.
Meta argues that regulating one company cannot solve an ecosystem-wide problem. The company says teenagers move among dozens of digital services and that restrictions on Facebook and Instagram could simply shift their attention elsewhere. It has publicly called on TikTok and YouTube to adopt the same two-hour limits, nighttime blocks, school-hour notification restrictions and parental controls, describing uniform industry standards as essential to making the protections effective. Meta's argument contains a practical challenge for regulators: even aggressive restrictions on one platform may have limited impact if young users can immediately move their attention to another app operating under different rules.
That argument, however, also exposes one of the settlement's biggest unanswered questions: age enforcement. Restrictions designed for under-18s work only when platforms can reliably identify under-18 users. Meta says it will strengthen systems for detecting accounts belonging to children under 13 and identifying 13-to-17-year-olds who enter adult birth dates. The company has also renewed its argument that app stores should provide developers with verified age information, shifting part of the responsibility toward the companies controlling smartphone ecosystems. Critics have long warned that inaccurate birthdays and secondary accounts can undermine age-based social-media protections, making implementation as important as the rules themselves.
The settlement comes after years of escalating legal and political pressure over children's experiences online. The underlying litigation accused Meta of deliberately designing platforms to encourage compulsive use among young people and misleading the public about risks, allegations the company has contested. Meta says it has spent years developing protections for teenagers, beginning Teen Accounts in 2024 and subsequently expanding restrictions on unwanted contact, inappropriate material, direct messages and live streaming. The company said last year that 97% of Instagram users aged 13 to 15 had remained within the default Teen Account restrictions after their introduction.
The new agreement nevertheless changes the nature of those protections. Previous safety initiatives were largely Meta-designed product policies that the company could modify as its platforms evolved. The settlement places major protections inside a legally approved framework negotiated with public authorities, with most commitments lasting 10 years. That makes the development important beyond Facebook and Instagram: if TikTok, YouTube or other platforms face pressure to match the standard, a settlement originally aimed at Meta could begin establishing a broader U.S. baseline for how minors are permitted to use social-media services.
For families, however, the immediate question is simpler than the regulatory debate. A two-hour ceiling, nighttime shutdown, fewer notifications, hidden likes and tighter filters may reduce some of the mechanisms that keep teenagers continuously engaged, but they cannot determine what happens once young people leave Facebook or Instagram, prevent every attempt to evade age controls or eliminate harmful material across the wider internet. Meta's settlement may therefore mark an important transition from voluntary child-safety promises toward enforceable restrictions — but parents' early reaction suggests the next battle will be over whether regulators are limiting children's time inside social media or fundamentally changing the systems competing to keep them there.