Meta to limit teens to two hours daily on Instagram and Facebook under $18B state settlement

Meta agrees to decade-long restrictions on minors

Meta has agreed to an extensive set of restrictions on how minors can use Instagram and Facebook, part of an $18 billion settlement resolving children's safety claims brought by 29 US states. According to TechCrunch, the new protections will switch on automatically for users under 18 in participating states and territories once a judge approves the deal, and most of them must remain in force for ten years.

A two-hour daily cap

The headline change is a daily two-hour limit on teenage use. Time counts cumulatively across Facebook and Instagram, and Meta says the cap also applies where it detects one person operating multiple accounts. Once the limit is reached, minors lose access to both apps, and only parental permission can turn the cap off.

Night lockout and quieter school days

Meta will introduce a default "Night Mode" that bars underage users from opening, posting to or viewing anything on its platforms between midnight and 6 a.m. A company spokesperson told TechCrunch that Meta already silences notifications for teens overnight, but the new setting blocks access outright.

Notifications will also be muted by default between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m., the window Meta has designated for school hours. Direct messages and alerts tied to account security or safety are the only exceptions.

Feed, autoplay and design changes

Teens will be able to make a non-algorithmic, non-personalized feed their default experience. Instagram and Facebook currently offer only a temporary chronological view before the recommendation-driven feed returns each time the app is opened, and parents and guardians will now be able to set the non-personalized option as their children's default.

Parents and teens can also switch off autoplay, so additional content appears only after an explicit tap or swipe. Like and reaction counts will be hidden by default for under-18s, both on their own posts and other people's, extending a setting teens can already enable manually.

Other changes include usage prompts after every 15 minutes of continuous scrolling, on top of the prompts teens already receive at 60 minutes of total daily use, and a ban on extreme makeup filters for minors, which broadens Meta's existing block on cosmetic surgery filters.

Tighter age detection

Meta said it is improving how it identifies users aged 13 to 17 who register with an adult birth date, so protections follow a user's actual age rather than the stated one. The company will also keep current measures in place: teen accounts default to private, age-inappropriate accounts remain off-limits, and adults the company flags as suspicious stay blocked from contacting minors.

Billions tied to TikTok and YouTube

The $18 billion will be paid to the states over ten years, but roughly $5.3 billion, or 30% of the total, is contingent on TikTok and YouTube adopting equivalent limits, TechCrunch reports. Meta has published an open letter urging both companies to introduce a daily time limit, an overnight access block, school-hour notification restrictions and 15-minute prompts, arguing that teenagers migrate to whichever app remains unrestricted when limits apply to only one.

Why it matters

The settlement converts features that have long been optional parental controls into mandatory defaults for minors and locks most of them in for a decade, a rare case of product design being settled through litigation rather than policy debate. The reported $18 billion payout also ranks among the largest resolutions of its kind for a social media company.

Just as significant is the contingent structure: by withholding $5.3 billion unless rivals match its measures, Meta has a direct financial stake in competitors adopting similar restrictions, effectively pushing an industry-wide baseline without new legislation. If YouTube and TikTok comply, teens across the US would face consistent limits for the first time; if they resist, states stand to lose a substantial share of the award.

Because the changes apply only in participating states and territories, the deal also sets up a patchwork experience in which a teenager's protections depend on where they live.