Meta pays $18 billion, rebuilds Instagram, locks out teenagers at night

Meta ends a process about addiction design at Facebook with a billion-dollar payment and conditions: for under-18s, a maximum of two hours a day, a night ban and hidden like numbers. However, there are one or two buts.

Expensive agreement

Meta has prematurely ended the process surrounding the design of Facebook and Instagram for young people, which it alleges is addictive. The company agreed to a settlement on Wednesday with a nationwide coalition of attorneys general. It envisages a payment of around $18 billion over ten years and extensive renovations to both platforms. Loud NPR Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers at the federal court in Oakland still has to approve the paper. The trial began on August 18 and was scheduled to last until early October.

Instagram boss Adam Mosseri was in the witness stand yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg was expected to follow. 29 states sued, led by California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey. They accuse Meta of deliberately tailoring Instagram to be addictive, withholding internal findings about psychological consequences and collecting data from children under 13 without parental consent, which violates the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. Meta denies the allegations and does not officially admit any wrongdoing in the settlement – this is standard in such cases.

Two hours and a night’s rest

For users under 18, a common daily limit of two hours will apply to Facebook and Instagram, with enforced breaks after 15, 60 and 90 minutes of continuous use. The apps are blocked between midnight and 6 a.m., and on school days there are no push notifications between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. The limit and night lock can only be lifted with parental approval.

There is also a more reliable age check, hidden like numbers, a ban on beauty and cosmetic surgery filters and a non-personalized feed without a recommendation algorithm as a selectable default setting. An independent auditor should monitor implementation annually for five years.

Payment with conditions

The amount of the settlement is staggered: around 12.7 billion dollars, or 70 percent, will flow to the participating states and will, among other things, finance online security programs. The remaining $5.3 billion will only be available if TikTok and YouTube introduce comparable rules including a one-hour limit, night mode and age verification and pay a corresponding amount themselves.

Depending on the calculation method, figures between 16.7 and 18 billion dollars are circulating. For the third quarter of 2026, Meta expects a charge of around $10 billion. Measured against the group’s sales of $201 billion in 2025, the comparison remains manageable, especially since claims in the hundreds of billions were at times involved in the proceedings.

Criticism remains

For years, child protection experts and former employees have considered Meta’s child protection functions to be a facade. Former engineering director Arturo Béjar testified in the trial that the company had prioritized service life over the well-being of users. Meta, on the other hand, refers to existing tools such as teenage accounts and calls on TikTok and YouTube to follow suit immediately; without industry-wide rules, the framework will be of little use. This should also apply to the limits themselves, because they can still be switched off, just with parental blessing.