A major lawsuit between Meta and 52 attorneys general across the United States that accused social media giant Meta of knowingly designing products that were harmful and addictive to children was settled Wednesday, with Facebook and Instagram’s parent company agreeing to pay about $17 billion. This is one of several trials Meta has faced this year alone related to alleged harm to young users.
A statement from the company Wednesday said the settlement money “can be used to fund youth online safety initiatives, among other state priorities.” “This is the largest amount ever awarded in a case like this,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who co-led the effort, told David Faber on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Streets” on Thursday. Still, “the heart of this case is not the fine that Meta is paying,” Bonta said. “It’s the business practices they will change that will help protect the mental health of children.”
The proposed settlement requires Meta to implement a series of safeguards and parental control features for Facebook and Instagram users under the age of 18. Most of the terms are required to last for 10 years, and Meta’s payments will be distributed annually over that 10-year period, the company said in a statement. The company’s market capitalization as of Friday afternoon was $1.47 trillion, up slightly from $1.45 trillion as of Tuesday’s market close.
Laura Edelson, an assistant professor of computer science at Northeastern University who studies social media safety, said many of the features mandated in the settlement hold promise when it comes to a safer online experience for young users.
In June 2026, Edelson co-authored a research report that found that approximately 60% of social media safety features across the industry fail to effectively protect young users. According to Gallup, studies have found a link between increased screen time and poorer mental and physical health in teens, with nearly half of U.S. teens reporting using social media for at least four hours per day.
Meta is not the only social media company gaining attention for its commitment to child safety. For example, on August 21, TikTok agreed to a $400 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice to resolve allegations of violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Act. YouTube, which has faced similar lawsuits in the past few years, released new teen-focused protections in January, including the ability for parents to set time limits on YouTube Shorts for their children.
The meta-settlement also mandates daily time limits for children on both Facebook and Instagram, part of a package of features that “research points to as being helpful,” Edelson said. Still, the mandate isn’t always perfect, she added.
Here are some of the new elements of Meta’s two platforms and how Edelson thinks they could impact teens’ online experiences.
New guardrails include 2-hour usage limit per day
According to a statement released by Meta, new features for minors on Instagram and Facebook include:
A cumulative two-hour daily limit across Facebook and Instagram. “Night Mode,” which teens can turn off only with parental permission and does not include messaging, prevents teens from accessing features like Feed, Stories, and Reels from midnight to 6 a.m. You can still access your messaging. Ability for youth or parents to disable autoplay on two platforms. Teens need to tap or swipe to see more content. All forms of likes and reaction statistics will be removed. Posting Teens or parents can choose a non-algorithmic feed that is not personalized with system recommendations and includes only content from accounts that the teen follows or is associated with. Powerful age guarantee technology to remove under 13s and ensure 13-17 year olds have access to age-appropriate versions of apps
A Meta spokesperson told CNBC Make It that most of the safeguards will be in place within six months. Features such as age guarantee may take up to a year. A spokesperson said most of the new features will be automatically implemented for teens’ accounts, but parents and teens will need to manually disable autoplay and algorithmic feeds in settings.
Edelson highlights the ability to disable autoplay as particularly promising. Social media’s autoplay feature lengthens the “use period,” so disabling it can be beneficial in reducing the amount of time teens spend on these platforms, she says.
However, the fact that parents and teens must do so themselves to reap the benefits creates additional work. It’s unrealistic to create a scenario where children have to go through multiple steps to disable a feature. Because many people simply don’t go to such trouble, she added. A Meta spokesperson said the app will periodically notify youth of one feature, the ability to switch to a non-algorithmic feed, if they have not chosen to toggle that setting.
Future features may include the ability to stop autoplay, but not the ability to disable infinite scrolling, Edelson said. Infinite scroll automatically loads new content when users reach the bottom of the page, encouraging continued engagement with the platform’s feed. That’s “something I think is really missing here,” she says. However, infinite scrolling has been removed and a two-hour time limit has been put in place to prevent teens from scrolling for too long, a Meta spokesperson said.
“Parents should regularly discuss social media with their children.”
Another notable part of the settlement, Mehta’s statement said, is the creation of both an independent social media research foundation to advance research into teen well-being and an independent auditing firm that will “examine Mehta’s compliance with the agreement and report to the states.”
Meta is still working out the details of these factors, a spokesperson said. Such a foundation could help teens develop a healthier relationship with social media if it included “some independent way of verifying what the platforms are doing and whether they actually live up to these promises,” Edelson said.
However, she says there is no one-size-fits-all advice for parents to help their children access social media in a healthy and safe way.
“The right approach to social media is different for each child and changes over time as children move through developmental stages and social environments,” Edelson says. “Parents should regularly talk to their children about social media use and help them understand what they get out of it and how it makes them feel.”
This article has been updated to reflect a clarification from a Meta spokesperson that under the new safeguards, Facebook and Instagram will periodically notify users under 18 of their option to switch to a non-algorithmic feed if they have not already done so.
