Meta agreed on Wednesday, to major new defaults for users under 18 on Instagram and Facebook as part of a large US states settlement over youth safety and addiction claims.
The changes apply in participating states and territories, with many features rolling out over the next four to six months and remaining in place for years. Parents can loosen most limits; teens generally cannot.
Time and access limits
- A default two-hour daily cap across Instagram and Facebook combined. Time resets at midnight. Messaging, account settings, and videos/audio longer than about 22 minutes usually do not count. The cap also applies if Meta detects extra accounts belonging to the same teen. Parents can raise or remove it.
- Night Mode blocks most of the apps from midnight to 6 a.m. Teens cannot post or browse Feed, Stories, Reels, or Explore. Messaging and settings stay available.
- During the US school year, notifications are muted from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Direct messages and safety/security alerts are typically excepted.
- Feeds, features, and contentTeens get a reasonably accessible option for a non-personalized (non-recommendation) feed. Parents can make that the default, and Meta will remind teens about the choice.
- Autoplay can be turned off; parents can require that setting.
- Like counts are hidden by default.
- Cosmetic-surgery and extreme-makeup filters are blocked for teens.
- Frequent “take a break” prompts appear after 15 minutes of continuous scrolling and again at 60 and 90 minutes.
- Age checks and parental toolsMeta must strengthen age-assurance systems (its own plus possible third-party tools) to remove under-13 users and place 13–17-year-olds in teen protections. New accounts default to teen settings until evaluated. Systems face independent audits and an appeals process.
Supervising parents get more visibility: time-use data, connections, first-time messages with adults, keyword searches related to self-harm/suicide/eating disorders, and alerts about extra accounts. Many safety settings stay locked without parent approval.
These build on earlier Teen Accounts work (private-by-default accounts, 13+ movie-ratings-style content filters, and AI tools that try to catch teens who list adult birthdays).
These build on earlier Teen Accounts work (private-by-default accounts, 13+ movie-ratings-style content filters, and AI tools that try to catch teens who list adult birthdays).
The settlement focuses more on usage limits and defaults than on banning specific topics. Implementation details and exact timing can still shift as the agreement is finalized and rolled out.