"The changes agreed by Meta are a positive step towards protecting children online. However, this settlement addresses only part of a much larger problem. Children are among the most vulnerable users of digital technologies, and their risks extend far beyond Facebook, Instagram and traditional social media. Children increasingly interact with AI companion bots, conversational AI services, educational apps, games and other digital platforms. These technologies can expose them to multiple risks, including excessive collection of personal information, profiling, misinformation, age-inappropriate or harmful content, manipulative interactions, and recommendations or conversations that may encourage unsafe actions. At the same time, technology is increasingly being used against children. Their images and videos can be manipulated, sexualised or distributed without consent, while generative AI can make technology-facilitated abuse easier to create and scale.

We need to focus on preventing foreseeable harm through Safety by Design and Privacy by Design, rather than responding after harm occurs. This responsibility must apply across the digital ecosystem, from social media and AI companies to gaming and educational platforms. The burden of staying safe online should not fall on children and parents; safer technology should be the default."

"The concessions and settlement Meta has made in the US today are a big move to change the teen social media experience and will likely reduce many of the risks teens experience on social media. The concessions themselves are not perfect—stopping notifications instead of access at night, for example, and setting time limits without supporting design decisions such as the end of infinite scroll to support teens in learning to manage their access before they become adults. It is also only one user group, and only one country; however, it is a huge step forward in the relationship between users and social media companies: this is the first time we have seen such major changes from a social media company to benefit the wellbeing of their users. It signals a change in the social temperature of the social media debate—big tech can no longer 'move fast and break things ' (or people) with impunity. It is also a signal to the public that social media companies can and will make design decisions to improve their experience—perhaps we might all demand more of these companies."

"The settlement is a step in the right direction.  It is unclear whether the money Facebook has agreed to pay will be spent in ways that ultimately help prevent harm to teens. The changes at Facebook as part of the settlement might help prevent harm, but they might not. Studies are needed to determine the effects of the settlement."

"Although the new rules will only apply in America, it is a significant decision that may flow through to Australian Instagram and Facebook users in the long term. 

Meta has implemented the ‘ban’ on kids using social media very inefficiently in Australia.

So, we do still have 60-70% of kids in Australia potentially exposed to these addictive features.  

If Meta maintains certain addictive features in Australia such as infinite scrolling, autoplay, and no time limits but changes them in the US, you would hope our government moves to have them changed here too.”

"The settlement changes how long the machine runs, not what it optimises for.

Time caps, notification curfews and hiding like counts all limit exposure. None of them touches the engine underneath, which still has one job: maximise engagement. It has no understanding of morality and no understanding of safety.

The mechanism doing the damage is intermittent reward, the same schedule that makes poker machines work and the most addictive one we know of in the literature. That is not something that emerged by accident. It was built.

Our own work points to the second problem the settlement leaves alone. A brand new account that looks like it belongs to a teenage boy is served toxic-masculinity content within about half an hour. The boys are not hunting for it. With no history to go on, the recommender falls back on what similar users consume, and that is what it finds.

The number is what is genuinely new here. Platforms do not self-regulate, because every guardrail costs engagement and engagement is income. Until now, the harm was free. A US$17 billion settlement puts a price on it, and price is a lever regulation has struggled to find.

Whether any of this works, we will not be able to tell. Nobody outside Meta can measure it."

"As part of the changes, the courts have mandated that the age assurance methods that Meta uses must be un-bypassable! These methods must be mandated by mid-2027 in Australia (and globally across Facebook, Insta and Messenger).

While Australia’s social media ban has seen almost 85% of young people still using social media, mainly because of by-passing age verification, this mandate by the courts shows that the world is learning from our social media ban. Australia has been the guinea pig here but an important part of this new order. What we are seeing now is a new precedent, and a landmark of going straight to the platforms with court orders."

“This is a small but important win because it establishes that social media design is a matter of public accountability. But it also exposes the limits of relying on corporate goodwill. Meta’s concern that competitors should face comparable rules is quite telling and reveals why this cannot be solved company by company. Time limits and parental controls still push too much responsibility onto individuals when the underlying problem is systemic: privately owned global platforms control the algorithms, incentives, and business models designed to maximise engagement.

The harder question is who has the power to govern digital infrastructure that has become central to social life. That requires collective responsibility and ultimately a conversation about public-interest ownership and collective digital sovereignty. 

And because platforms operate globally, Australia has limited leverage acting alone. Middle powers need to coordinate so that public-interest obligations become common conditions of market access rather than concessions extracted jurisdiction by jurisdiction.”

"These changes by Meta are a positive step. Research shows that opt-out settings are much more effective than opt-in, and that social comparison on platforms like Instagram has negative effects, particularly around body image.

The question will be how these measures are implemented, and how effective they will be. Unfortunately, we might not get to know the answer. Due to Meta's restrictive policies around data access for researchers, it will be difficult for scientists to independently measure the effects of whatever changes Meta makes."

"Meta's agreement to significant changes to its Instagram and Facebook apps is a line-in-the-sand moment for Meta, and for other social media platforms. It is an unequivocal acknowledgement of what social media experts in Australia have been stating since 2024: that wellbeing harms for children and young people are caused by platform design.

Addressing wellbeing must occur upstream, through forcing platforms to be responsible for the negative impacts their design features cause for mental health. Meta's changes to time limits, stopping notifications during school, a block on the app overnight, and bans on plastic surgery filters are an acknowledgment that these features cause significant harm.

In a context where the social media age restrictions in Australia are ineffective in blocking access, and do not address the cause of social media harms anyway, the outcomes of this lawsuit are promising. Platform changes such as these are likely to have a much greater impact on improving health and wellbeing outcomes. As other countries around the globe are looking to Australia as an example to regulate social media use, platform changes could be much more effective and represent crucial structural changes that will directly improve wellbeing."

"I think one of the most important aspects of these changes is the shift away from placing the responsibility entirely on young people and their families to manage social media use themselves. Adolescence is a period of heightened sensitivity to social feedback, peer evaluation and belonging, while the systems involved in self-regulation are still developing. How platforms are designed therefore matters.

At the same time, I think we need to be careful not to reduce this issue to screen time, or to assume that social media affects all young people in the same way. My research has focused on adolescents’ experiences of cyberbullying and online harm, and one thing that is increasingly clear is that there is considerable variation in how young people experience and respond to the digital environment. What they are exposed to online, their individual vulnerabilities, and the protective factors and supports they have around them can all shape outcomes.

Making safeguards the default rather than relying on teenagers to opt into them is a sensible step. However, the real test will be whether these changes actually reduce harmful experiences and improve young people’s wellbeing over time. I believe that needs to be evaluated independently rather than assumed."

"This landmark case shows the power of state governments in shaping social media platforms' responses to the youth mental health crisis. For too long, governments have felt their bargaining power against tech companies is limited, with the total market value of companies like Meta being around the same size as Australia's entire national economy.

The proposed changes are a step in the right direction, but may inadvertently encourage children and young people to be more secretive in their social media use to hide activities from parents, as we've seen locally already from the recent eSafety Commissioner's report on the social media ban's impacts. I still have concerns that too much responsibility will be placed on parents to oversee their child's social media use, when we know the risks for children's mental health are global concerns happening in most households rather than a few higher risk families. Expanding protections to other platforms like YouTube, Reddit, and TikTok will also be needed given the rise of their use amongst Australian adolescents following the social media ban."

"Meta's own lawyers made the strongest argument in this settlement: teens move fluidly across dozens of apps, so a fix on one platform is not a fix. The agreement even makes Meta's tightest limit conditional on competitors adopting the same rules, which tells you how fragile a single-company remedy is.

Australia has already run this experiment.

Our under-16 ban was contested over which platforms it covers, with Roblox arguing it is a game rather than social media, with Discord, Twitch and Pinterest in grey areas. Attention relocates when you constrain it. Newcastle researchers found more than 85% of under-16s still on restricted platforms three months in. Making Instagram the least engaging place for a 15-year-old, while smaller platforms carry no equivalent duty, will move young people towards services with thinner moderation and no parental infrastructure at all.

The second consequence is less obvious. Turning off like counts and filters reduces social comparison, and it also removes the feedback young creators use to learn audience building. Many under-16s are active creators rather than passive scrollers, building skills that lead into the creative and communications industries. Design fixes protect them. Media literacy and creator education equip them. Protection without capability is half the job."

“Meta’s settlement with multiple US states comes out of a sustained period of bellwether multidistrict litigation (BML) cases being pursued against the company, as well as YouTube, TikTok and Snap, around alleged addictive design features of their platforms that were harmful to the mental health of young people. After a long period of denying responsibility, claiming that access to social media was a net positive and concerns were overstated, Meta’s abrupt U-turn comes as countries around the world are considering greater restrictions upon the access of teenagers to social media platforms, such as the social media age restrictions adopted in Australia for under-16s. 

Importantly, the BML cases focused upon design attributes of the platforms rather than content, as the latter has significant free speech protections under US law. There are several caveats in Meta’s settlement claims, including the requirement that parents need to oversee the settings changes, and that changes to Facebook and Instagram are contingent upon equivalent changes being made with YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat. As the changes require a capacity to identify the age of platform users (i.e. are they under 16), the challenge of implementing age verification requirements that do not unduly impinge upon user privacy, which has been the major issue with social media bans in Australia, remains a policy challenge.”

"The Meta settlement is a promising step in the right direction. In the settlement, Meta agreed to safety-by-design changes that will make Facebook and Instagram safer for young users. Usage limits and night-time blocks are features already available in the apps but not enforced. Activating these features by default for young people can reduce screen exposure before sleep and excessive social media use, both of which are digital behaviours associated with poorer youth wellbeing."

"The announced Meta changes mark a decisive shift in recognising how young people are impacted by social media by placing the onus on social media platforms' intentionally addictive design as a first step toward change.

For the past decade, young people have formed part of a large-scale experiment on how 24/7 connection would impact their growth and development. As with any key influence on young people, it is not all negative. Connection, opportunity, access to information and communities outside ordinary social circles are clear positives that arise from access to social media, particularly for those who are isolated.

However, we cannot ignore the declining mental health statistics that suggest, at minimum, that controls must be put in place to begin to inform a shift towards a more balanced and appropriate use of social media for developing minds (and, to be frank, all ages). Platform control of time spent on Meta platforms (Facebook and Instagram combined) is a particularly significant step in reducing distractions that cause users to (often unintentionally) spend hours on their phones. Regulations from the source apply to all other forms of traditional media. Finally, introducing such controls to the unregulated world of social media, while not perfect, is welcome and long overdue."

"It's often said that technology outpaces law, but here the law clearly caught up.

The joint action by attorneys-general across all the US states against Meta has led to the largest settlement of its kind by a long shot: US $17bn and a range of other remedies.

It sounds like a wide range of blocks and features will be required for children who use the platform, like time limits, stronger parental controls, and changes to like buttons.

The settlement will likely have a major flow-on effect for other social media platforms."

"Meta has NOT admitted liability. The key thing is that the eSafety Commissioner will have some very specific evidence on what is “reasonably necessary”. She will be able to use what Meta has promised to the California court as actions that Meta can take in Australia.

It’s likely that the design changes will be global, but the timed lockouts will be limited to the 29 states in the legal action. These design changes mainly affect people in Australia who are 16 or 17 years old. They will have an experience that is designed to reduce body dysmorphia and suicidal ideation.”

“It’s revealing that it took a huge lawsuit in the United States to get a social media company to agree to a comprehensive child-safety trial. This kind of trial could have been implemented years ago across social media platforms to safeguard children and young adults. I’d also like to see Meta and other social media platforms at minimum investing in media literacy education – funding for this vital work has thus far been piecemeal and insufficient.”

"The current ruling will likely go some way to protect people who may be vulnerable to a range of mental health and related concerns. From a psychological perspective, these findings acknowledge that social media platform design can shape behaviour in ways that resemble the mechanisms involved in addiction and habit formation.

The reported changes, including time limits, overnight blocks, notification restrictions during school hours, hiding likes, and reducing appearance-altering filters, all target specific psychological vulnerabilities in adolescents, which will likely have positive impacts on young people. It is important to note that social media is neither inherently harmful nor beneficial. The impact of social media is shaped by a range of factors, including age, individual personality, mental health status, motives for use, time spent on social media and the nature of the interactions.

A key consideration is often not how much social media people use, but how they use it, why they use it and the nature of the interactions. Social media can serve important psychological needs. It can facilitate belonging, social support, information, and opportunities for connection, particularly for individuals who may feel isolated offline.

However, there are risks. We know that social comparison is amplified online and that social media exposes people to highly curated versions of other people’s lives. This can increase upward social comparison and contribute to feelings of inadequacy, envy, or lower self-esteem. Further, whilst social media provides opportunities for self-expression and identity exploration, it can also create pressure for people to feel they need to manage their 'online persona' and present an idealised version of who they are, which can be damaging. These factors make it all risky for addiction for people of all ages, but especially children."

"Many of the changes Meta has agreed to are definite improvements for young users, from time limits, reduced notifications overnight and during school times, the ability to stop videos auto-playing, and so forth. Settling means legal precedent has been avoided, but the size of the settlement is in the billions, so a clear indicator to Meta and all of big tech that the global desire for better platform regulation for young people needs to be taken seriously. 

Meta has signalled that a lot of the new experiences for teens will be determined by an expanded set of parental control tools. That puts a lot of responsibility back on parents, many of whom already struggle to keep on top of platform changes and balance social media rules inside families. A lot of support and upskilling of parental digital literacies will be needed to help them shape their children's experiences through Meta tools and dashboards. Safety, once again, is being deferred to parents in many ways. 

On one hand, Meta is also desperately trying to make this an industry-wide responsibility, not just a Meta one, by making billions contingent on YouTube and TikTok making similar changes, but even though their motivations might be cynical, this may ultimately prove beneficial to young people as these changes rippling across all the largest platforms ultimately should make social media a safer space for people under the age of 18. It remains to be seen if these tools will automatically be available to Australian teens, but it seems likely that, otherwise, similar lawsuits will likely come from Australia. Indeed, these changes may well appeal to many adult Instagram and Facebook users, too, as everyone seeks to better balance their social media use.

Outside of Meta, this settlement clearly signals that teen safety and wellbeing need to be a more central consideration of platform design going forward, which is compatible with the safety Commissioner's consistent push for a 'safety by design' default."

"Meta's settlement alters some of the basic design features of Facebook and Instagram for young people, limiting notifications, autoplay and algorithmic feeds. In some ways, it takes social media back towards its roots, while raising a bigger question about what "social media" now means to young people.

Some of these changes take social media surprisingly close to where it began. Less algorithmically recommended content, and more from accounts you directly follow, puts some of the 'social' back into social media.

Toning down push notifications, autoplay, and endless feeds also starts to unwind some of the commercial machinery designed to constantly pull people in and keep them engaged. That's a positive move, and one that could benefit more than just young people.

But we also need to recognise that many people increasingly use what we call 'social media' as personalised entertainment. Much of the actual social and community activity has shifted into private messages, group chats and smaller networks.

So while these are sensible changes, there's a risk we're fixing yesterday's version of social media. The real test is whether they match how young people actually use these apps today, and whether the rest of the attention economy follows Meta's lead.

Australia has spent enormous political energy trying to keep young people off social media. This settlement asks the much better question: why not make social media better for young people in the first place?"

"This marks a big change, since users and parents used to carry most of the responsibility. Now, more of that responsibility falls on the platforms and how they design their products.

Platforms like Facebook and Instagram are designed to keep people engaged. Advertising drives most of Meta’s revenue, which means user attention and engagement are commercially valuable. In the US, lawsuits allege that some design features encourage addictive or compulsive use, especially among young people. Meta denies any wrongdoing.

The Australian Government legislated to restrict social media accounts for under-16s. Some argue that tech-savvy young people may find ways around restrictions while others regard the legislation as government overreach or believe responsibility should sit primarily with parents. At the same time, governments have an obligation to consider the safety and wellbeing of children and teenagers.

What makes the Meta development particularly interesting is that it shifts attention from simply restricting access to changing the design of the platforms themselves.

The real question is whether these changes will meaningfully alter young people’s behaviour and exposure to potentially harmful engagement mechanisms, or whether they are principally a response to legal pressure. We will also need to know how Meta’s compliance and the effectiveness of the changes will be independently measured."

"Meta’s settlement is a historic win in efforts to hold a technology giant accountable. It is a first step towards confronting problems ignored for too long. In 2024, the American Academy of Pediatrics reported that emergency healthcare workers had encountered children displaying aggression or threatening self-harm when parents removed their phones or restricted social media access. This is clearly more than a ‘screen-time’ problem. In Australia, the settlement has reignited the ‘ban or no ban’ debate.

Yesterday’s Qustodio data suggests that some under-16s continue to access Instagram and TikTok by misrepresenting their age, creating new accounts or using VPNs.

It is high time for the Australian Government to recognise that fines and access restrictions alone will not solve the problem. Meta should consider developing regulated, child-friendly social media platforms that protect young users by design. Meta’s shift from optional safety tools to default protections is an important step because young users will find them much harder to bypass without parental permission.

But this cannot be just another promise from Meta. The company must be transparent, allow its safety claims to be independently tested, and show that protecting children matters more than keeping them online and generating profit."

"One of the striking things about this settlement is that no teenager had to bring it or prove they were harmed. This claim was brought by various American states' attorneys general, principally on the claim that Meta told the public its platforms were safer than its own internal research showed, together with a claim that it collected data from children Meta knew were under 13, contrary to state law. The AGs would not have needed to show that Instagram made any particular teenager anxious or depressed. Penalties under these statutes are order per violation, and violations here were counted by reference to the number of young users. The eye-watering figure is therefore a product of the size of Meta's user base. Meanwhile, the teenagers' own cases are still grinding through the courts. As has been reported, Meta denies wrongdoing, and a judge has yet to approve the settlement.

Various features of the Australian consumer law mean this case would be very different here. We have a single national statute (rather than fifty) and the federal regulator, the ACCC, could allege misleading conduct, but our general prohibition carries no financial penalty, and to obtain a penalty the regulator must prove a false representation about the quality or performance of a product. When the ACCC pursued Google for misleading some 1.3 million Australians about the settings governing their location data, the Federal Court in 2018 imposed $60 million."

“The news that Meta has agreed to major changes to its two main platforms in a settlement related to a court case on teen addiction is momentous on many levels.

Hot on the heels of Albanese’s Australian legislation aiming at banning social media for under-16s here, it seems Meta has ‘read the room’ and realised this large settlement and these changes are the best way forward in the US if they are to have any chance of retaining their social licence to operate across the world.

The under-16 social media ban here has been criticised on many levels, but coinciding with these court cases, shows how deeply the community across the world is concerned and angered by big tech’s power over all of us, including children.

I have been one of many academics to argue that Australia’s ban was not the correct way forward and instead the platforms need to be made safer for everyone, including adults. Indeed, it has been shown in research that most young people under 16 are still able to access platforms if they wish to. 

It will be interesting to see if these changes Meta has flagged are implemented worldwide and if adults push for more safety features for themselves.”

"Given the recent trial settlement, Meta has agreed to make changes to teens' safety settings on its platforms.

Making such settings "default" instead of 'opt-in' may be just a first step in ameliorating the harm from social media.

However, several questions need to be raised. Would these settings 'keep up' with the ever-changing landscape of media, such as any potential additions/updates of features to existing Meta platforms, or its competitors' platforms? Would these settings (such as time limits) also be made available to older users who would like to moderate their social media use? Most importantly, given the wealth of academic research on strategies to reduce harm on social media, are these settings enough, or are they the bare minimum?"

"The settlement is momentous because it demonstrates that social media platform providers can be held to account for harmful designs and features, and that efforts focused on making online environments safer for children through taking legal action can be effective.

The recognition that Meta also illegally collected children’s personal data is powerful because it highlights how data-driven business models are tied to the specific harms that platforms produce.

There are still questions about the impact of the measures Meta implements, whether they will apply to users outside the U.S., and how feasible this kind of legal action is for other countries. The changes may also have some unintended effects on children’s need to participate digitally, as we have seen with social media bans that rely on age verification. These effects will need to be carefully monitored and researched to better understand the broader implications for policy and for children’s participation online."

"Social media apps aren’t neutral tools. Many work a bit like slot machines, using unpredictable rewards that encourage us to keep checking and scrolling. They are designed to keep us coming back! Adolescents may be especially responsive to these features because their developing brains are particularly sensitive to rewards, novelty, and social feedback. Changing how apps are designed and presented is an important start, but platforms still need to take far greater responsibility for the ways they capture and hold young people’s attention.

However, redesigning or regulating apps won’t solve the problem on its own. Young people who are already more vulnerable may be more likely to spend time online, often looking for connection, information, or a sense of belonging. We also need to make online spaces safer for teenagers. Simply limiting access or changing app features without considering why some young people are drawn online in the first place may mean we are missing the bigger picture. There’s no single fix. We need a multipronged approach that combines greater platform responsibility, safer online spaces, and much stronger digital literacy. Digital literacy also isn’t something we should expect young people to develop alone. Parents, educators, app developers, politicians, and the broader community need to understand how these platforms work and how they can influence our attention and behaviour. Keeping young people safer online is not something teenagers should be left to manage by themselves."