OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Kids under 18 will soon experience changes to their Instagram and Facebook accounts due to a historic $18 billion settlement Meta Platforms reached with 48 U.S. states on August 27, 2026. In addition to the financial payout, which will be distributed over a decade, Meta has agreed to enhance its age verification processes to prevent children under 13 from accessing its platforms and to ensure that teens have age-appropriate accounts. The new rules include a hard limit of two hours of daily use for users under 18, restrictions on app access from midnight to 6 a.m., and the hiding of 'like' counts, among other measures.
Meta stated that these new safeguards will only be applicable in the United States and will remain in effect for a decade. While some critics acknowledge that these changes represent a significant step forward for child safety, they argue that the measures will not resolve existing issues immediately.
Arturo Béjar, a former Meta engineering director, described the settlement as a 'significant milestone' but cautioned that parents should not assume Instagram is now safe for children. He expressed concerns about Meta's ability to define harm and emphasized the need for the company to address the addictive nature of content recommendations for teens.
Meta has indicated that individuals over 18 can opt into some of the new controls, such as daily time-limit reminders, but they will not have the option to adopt the overall settings designed for teen users. To effectively protect minors, Meta must accurately identify their ages. The company has previously used artificial intelligence to verify ages but acknowledged that it has not always been effective.
Under the settlement, Meta will enhance its age verification technology, employing both its own tools and third-party resources, along with regular external audits to assess effectiveness. The agreement includes specific targets for reducing false positives, where minors are incorrectly identified as over 18. If a user is determined to be under 13 and removed from the platforms, Meta will also check the ages of their friends.
Meta's existing policy requires users to be at least 13 years old to create an account, in compliance with federal child privacy law. Béjar criticized Meta's previous approach, stating that the company lacked clear metrics for detecting and verifying the ages of suspected underage users.
Critics have highlighted that many of Meta's safety features require users to manually activate them. However, several of the new safeguards will be enabled by default, including the two-hour usage limit, which can only be disabled with parental permission. Other features, such as disabling video autoplay or displaying posts chronologically, will remain opt-in.
Josh Golin, executive director of the online safety nonprofit Fairplay, expressed disappointment that the settlement focuses on providing tools for parents rather than eliminating harmful features altogether. He criticized the lack of default settings that would prevent recommendation algorithms from connecting children to potentially harmful content.
Concerns regarding default settings were raised during the trial when a lawyer questioned Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, about the low adoption rate of the 'take a break' feature, which encourages users to pause their activity after prolonged scrolling. Although Meta has made this feature a default setting for teenage accounts since 2024, teens can still dismiss the notification if they choose not to take a break.
Researchers have noted that many of Meta's past safety measures have proven ineffective or do not function as intended. Yaël Eisenstat, director of policy and impact for the Cybersafety Research Center, remarked that it is premature to determine whether the desired changes will be implemented. However, she acknowledged that the settlement represents a significant shift in Meta's approach to child safety.
Eisenstat emphasized that while the settlement demonstrates that feasible solutions exist for improving safety on the platform, much work remains to be done. She suggested that a combination of technical solutions, market forces, and government regulation will be necessary to address the issues effectively.
The settlement, which also includes the District of Columbia and U.S. territories, is pending approval by a judge.