Meta to Mute Notifications During School Hours in $18 Billion Settlement
Meta agreed to a settlement of up to $18 billion to resolve allegations that it intentionally engineered Facebook and Instagram to addict children. The agreement, reached with a bipartisan coalition of nearly every U.S. state attorney general, mandates strict operational changes for teen accounts, including muting push notifications during weekday school hours from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
The lawsuits alleged that Meta deployed compulsive product features such as infinite (doom) scrolling, push notifications, and visual comparison metrics that knowingly fueled a youth mental health crisis while misleading parents about platform safety. Additionally, the company was accused of violating the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act by harvesting personal data from under-13 users without parental consent and using those data streams to train generative AI models.
As it stands, the roughly $17.6 billion allocation will go to participating states, territories, and the District of Columbia, disbursed over a 10-year period to fund state-level youth online safety programs and mental health initiatives. California will receive the largest individual share of up to $2.2 billion, followed by payouts for Texas and New York exceeding $1 billion each. Roughly 70% of the total settlement is guaranteed, while the remaining 30% (approximately $5.3 billion) is contingent on competitors like TikTok and YouTube adopting comparable youth safety standards.
The settlement imposes strict, nationwide operational mandates on Facebook and Instagram minor accounts. Meta must enforce a default two-hour daily time cap for users under 18, which cannot be disabled without explicit parental consent. The company will implement automated Night Mode blocks that prevent app access between midnight and 6:00 a.m., alongside muting most push notifications during weekday school hours from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Meta is also required to overhaul its algorithmic infrastructure for teens. Young users will gain the ability to switch to non-algorithmic, chronological feeds by default and disable autoplay video functions. To prevent exposure to any toxic social comparison, Meta will restrict cosmetic beauty filters and hide public "like" counts for teen accounts. The mandate further requires better age-assurance mechanisms to prevent children under 13 from creating accounts and to ensure teens are placed into age-appropriate privacy settings. All of which will be regularly evaluated by an independent auditor for compliance and feature effectiveness.
The agreement cuts short an ongoing federal trial in Oakland, CA, sparing Meta executives from further high-profile testimony. While Meta did not admit wrongdoing, Chief Legal Officer C.J. Mahoney stated that the framework establishes a critical new standard for youth digital safety. State officials hailed the outcome as a historic regulatory turning point that forces accountability on big tech's social platform practices.
Of course, these folks might have missed the memo that teens don't use Facebook anymore.
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