Meta settles states' child-safety claims for $18B; Florida rejects deal as "peanuts"

Meta has agreed to a massive settlement with nearly every U.S. state and to put new daily limits on children’s social media use, ending a trial before it really ran its course. The company says the deal is worth nearly $18 billion. It still needs a judge’s approval before it becomes final.

The states had accused Meta of designing Facebook and Instagram to keep children hooked, while failing to warn them about addiction and mental health risks. Meta pushed back hard during the trial, saying some states were asking for more than $1.4 trillion. That number sets the scale of the fight. The settlement sets the scale of the surrender.

For users under 18, Meta says it will enforce a default two-hour daily time limit that can only be turned off with a parent’s permission. There will also be a default block from midnight to 6 am, plus a school mode that mutes notifications by default from 8 am to 3 pm.

The limit will cover Facebook and Instagram together, and scrolling time on both apps will count toward the same total. Meta says it will count time across multiple accounts too, if it detects them. Teens will also get a prompt after every 15 minutes of continuous screen time, then more prompts at 60 minutes and 90 minutes of daily use.

Meta already says it uses ID checks and face analysis to verify ages, so this is not coming out of nowhere. But the company is now putting hard limits on the very behavior it once treated as the product. That’s the part that matters most.