What the $17 Billion Meta Lawsuit Means for Kids and Social Media

Facebook and Instagram will roll out strict new limits aimed at curbing how much time children spend on the apps. TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat could be next.
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Keeping kids off social media has never been harder thanks to a plethora of platforms that are algorithmically engineered to keep teens scrolling.
But if you’re looking to limit your kids’ time on Facebook and Instagram, you will get a bit of help. The platforms’ parent company, Meta, recently agreed to strictly limit how teenagers use the apps, and to pay up to $18 billion to dozens of U.S. states, as part of a settlement agreement in a federal lawsuit.
Here’s everything you need to know about the case, including the coming changes to Instagram and Facebook, and why TikTok and Snapchat could be next.
How it happened
Social media apps have courted controversy since their earliest days, but the concerns ramped up in the late 2010s, after Instagram launched its uber-compelling algorithm, TikTok became available in the United States, and smartphone usage became nearly ubiquitous among teens. Today, U.S. teens spend nearly 5 hours a day scrolling social media, according to the American Psychological Association.
Academic studies began correlating high smartphone and social media usage with rising rates of adolescent anxiety, depression, and lower self-esteem.
Parents, pediatricians and other childhood experts began sounding the alarm on how the apps can impact teens: Late-night phone usage interferes with their sleep. Online interactions replace in-person communication, stunting social skill development and increasing loneliness. Constant exposure to digitally altered images can lead to body dissatisfaction, especially among girls. And exposure to online harassment and cyberbullying contributes to chronic anxiety and depression.
However, the frustration became a furor in 2021 when a former employee leaked internal company documents revealing that Meta’s own internal research showed Instagram and Facebook contributed to severe mental health issues, body image struggles (like eating disorders), and anxiety among teenagers.
Instead of releasing the information, court filings showed that Meta halted internal research projects, including a study that looked at the positive mental health impacts of deactivating social media, to avoid surfacing damaging information.
Prompted by these findings and a subsequent multi-state investigation, a bipartisan coalition of 33 state attorneys general formally sued Meta beginning in October 2023. This group eventually expanded to include over 40 states. (Motherly’s parent company, ParentsTogether, supported the effort.)
The states accused Meta of intentionally designing addictive features—such as infinite scrolling, push notifications, and algorithmic feeds—to hook children and teens, while misleading parents and the public about the true safety of the platforms.
Meta did not admit wrongdoing according to the terms of the settlement, but the company will have to pay up to $16.7 billion to 47 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands, Reuters reports. (Texas reached a separate settlement worth more than $1 billion.) Some of the states have earmarked the funds to address children’s mental health.
What it means for kids
In addition to the payouts, Meta agreed to make a series of changes to Facebook and Instagram aimed at curbing how much time children spend on the apps, and giving parents more control over how their kids use them.
- Daily time limits: Users under 18 can’t spend more than two hours per day cumulatively on Facebook and Instagram, unless their parents give them permission to turn the feature off.
- Nighttime restrictions: They cannot view or post to Feeds, Stories, Explore, or Reels from midnight to 6:00 a.m. (The nighttime lockout could be extended from 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. if competing platforms like TikTok and YouTube adopt similar rules.) Push notifications will be muted from 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., except for urgent security alerts. Direct messaging will remain active so young users can still communicate with family and friends
- Schooltime restrictions: Notifications will be silenced from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on weekdays during the school year. Users under 18 can still receive direct messages, account security warnings, and safety alerts.
- Feature restrictions: Users under 18 will no longer see the number of likes or reactions on their own posts or on anyone else’s posts by default. Meta will block minor accounts from using cosmetic surgery and “extreme makeup” filters.
- Break reminders: Meta will pause content and send mindfulness reminders after 60 and 90 minutes of cumulative Facebook and Instagram use every day, and the platforms will send break reminders during any session of continuous use that lasts longer than 15 minutes.
- Supervision alerts: Parents receive alerts if a teen links a secondary account, interacts with suspicious accounts, or tries to change core protective settings.
- Feed management: Parents can require non-algorithmic feeds, so that their kids only see content from accounts they have followed in chronological order.
- Autoplay management: Parents can turn off video autoplay, so that videos and clips will no longer start playing automatically as a user scrolls. To view a video or proceed to the next piece of content, teens will have to perform a conscious, deliberate action like tapping or swiping.
- Stricter age enforcement: Meta will use artificial intelligence to flag underage users. Flagged accounts will be restricted or deactivated until the user verifies their real age by submitting a government-issued ID.
Meta will roll out the daily time limits, overnight blocks, and school-hour restrictions over the next six months. The age enforcement mechanisms will finish deploying within a year.
Why it matters for parents
For years, parents have played whack-a-mole with digital products, restricting or deleting apps on their kids’ devices, only to do it again and again after the terms change, or their kids circumvent the app’s parental controls.
We’ve been told that it’s solely up to us to manage our kids’ online safety, even though our kids have access to smart devices at school and at friends’ homes. And we feel like bad parents when we can’t peel our kids off the apps that even adults find irresistible.
“Now the question is no longer why a parent didn’t limit screen time, but why a company built a product designed to make that impossible,” said Ailen Arreaza and Shelby Knox, leaders at ParentsTogether Action, in a joint statement.
The pressure is now on Meta’s competitors like Snap, TikTok and YouTube to implement similar or tighter restrictions. In fact, Meta won’t have to pay out roughly $5.3 billion if the apps don’t match Meta’s concessions—including a two-hour teen daily cap, midnight-to-6 a.m. usage blocks, school-hour notification silences, and disabled cosmetic filters.
California and other states still have active, separate lawsuits proceeding against TikTok and other platforms, and experts expect them to proactively modify their safety features to avoid multi-billion-dollar court losses.
Plus, pressure is growing from regulators around the world, NPR reports. Last year, Australia became the first country to ban children under 16 from using social media entirely, and lawmakers in Britain, Canada, Denmark, Indonesia and New Zealand are working on measures to follow suit.
It signals an important shift for parents: We are no longer alone in an era full of perplexing new technologies. The companies that create the products also are responsible for fostering a world where kids and their technologies can safely coexist.

















































































