Meta has reached a settlement in a child online privacy case brought by 29 US states, agreeing to pay up to $18bn over a decade. The decision to settle came as a surprise, as the trial, which focused on Meta's historic gathering and use of data from children under 13, had only been underway for five days.
The settlement includes several new safety measures for Instagram and Facebook. These changes will introduce a default two-hour daily time limit for known teen users across both platforms, though direct messaging will not count towards this limit. Notifications will also be muted between midnight and 06:00, and on school days from 08:00 to 15:00. Additionally, likes on posts and content will be entirely hidden for teens.
Most of these new features are expected to be rolled out as either default settings or options for teens within six months. However, new efforts by Meta to improve the identification of child users on its platforms will take up to a year to implement. Meta has stated that these new features will only be truly effective if rival social media platforms also adopt similar measures.