Facebook and Instagram are getting a curfew for anyone under 18. Under a settlement with a coalition of American state attorneys general, those users will be shut out between midnight and 6am, capped at two hours a day across the apps, and cut off from push notifications between 10pm and 7am and during school hours.
The clock is the smaller half of it. After 60 and 90 minutes of use in a day the apps will pause content and put a break reminder in front of the user, and any single session running past 15 minutes gets one too. Under-18s can switch to a feed with no algorithm in it, showing only the accounts they follow in the order things were posted, and a parent can make that the default. Likes and other reactions get hidden from young users entirely. A parent's explicit permission is needed to switch any of it off, and it all runs for at least five years.
The case behind this, brought in 2023, alleged that Meta built recommendation algorithms to keep young users on the platform as long as possible, deployed infinite scroll and constant notifications so they could not put it down, steered them towards content about eating disorders and self-harm, and then told everyone the products were safe.
Three numbers for one settlement
Now the money, and this is where the reporting pulls apart. The guaranteed part is at least $12.1 billion to the settling states. The $17.1 billion figure the attorneys general put in their headline only arrives if other major platforms settle on comparable terms, and it folds in a separate set of Cambridge Analytica claims worth more than $459 million.
Meta describes the same agreement differently: about $18 billion, paid in annual instalments over ten years, with roughly 70% of it guaranteed and the rest riding on its rivals. CNBC, reading the court filing, gives the child-safety case itself as $16.7 billion. Three numbers, one agreement, and the gap between them is a bet on what other companies do next.
The rest of the industry is in the price
Half of the contingent money is tied to YouTube's settlement and half to TikTok's, and the restrictions tighten if either one signs. A second phase, running ten years instead of five, would move the night lockout back to 10pm, switch off push notifications altogether, and cut under-18s to 60 minutes a day on each app. New York's Letitia James, who led the coalition, has an open lawsuit against TikTok.
The trial had been running about a week in an Oakland federal court when it stopped. Both sides waived their right to appeal, and Meta says it will book roughly $10 billion of legal expense in the third quarter.
Investors did the arithmetic quickly. Meta's shares rose about 1% on the day. Snap, caught up in the same push by the attorneys general and having settled nothing, fell more than 8%.
