Meta forced to strengthen protection for teenagers in the US

Protections that go further than the current Teen Accounts

Several safety measures become de facto requirements for 13- to 17-year-olds:

A maximum of two hours a day, combined across Facebook and Instagram. Once the limit is reached, access to the relevant features is blocked until midnight. The teenager will not be able to increase this limit themselves: a parent’s consent will be required. Messaging, settings and certain long-form content are, however, excluded from this calculation.

A proper night-time standstill between midnight and 6am, whereas until now Meta had essentially just reduced the frequency of notifications. Notifications will be disabled from 10pm to 7am and also during school hours, from 8am to 3pm on weekdays. The messaging service will remain available.

The Like and reaction counters will be hidden by default. Once again, the miner will not be able to revert to a less protective setting on their own.

The agreement also provides for breaks after 60 and 90 minutes of use and warnings during prolonged sessions. However, two issues have been left out: The non-personalised feed and the option to disable autoplay remain optional.

Meta will have to do a better job of verifying the ages of its users

The agreement also establishes a genuine framework for’age-based insurance, with measurable performance thresholds: for commercial solutions, no more than 3 % for 13–15-year-olds and 10 % for 16–17-year-olds will not be incorrectly identified as adults.

The methods must be tested, certified and audited. Meta must also integrate the reliable indicators of age provided by Apple and Google, put in place anti-circumvention mechanisms and develop a specific model to better identify children under the age of 13.

After Meta: TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat?

Approximately 5 billion dollars are conditional upon TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat adopting comparable obligations, particularly with regard to time management, age verification and auditing.

If these conditions are met, Meta’s obligations will themselves be strengthened: blocked from 10 pm to 7 am, with a limit of 60 minutes per platform. The agreement therefore also aims to establish common standards across the entire sector.

Allocation of funds: a principle of compensation directly linked to the damage suffered

The agreement stipulates that the funds paid by Meta may, in particular, be used for measures to repair and remediation : funding for the 988 helpline and crisis helplines for young people, mental health programmes, well-being and digital literacy education, after-school programmes, mobile-free school zones, training for healthcare professionals, and grants for schools and local authorities.

And what about Europe?

The DSA already enables the Commission to investigate and impose sanctions on very large platforms and to make the commitments they propose legally binding, in accordance with Article 71.

This summer, the Commission took the preliminary view that, amongst other things, Meta had not sufficiently mitigated the risks associated with the addictive design of Facebook and Instagram and that TikTok did not provide sufficient protection for minors’ accounts. The DSA has also led to the first significant penalty, in the form of a fine of A fine of 120 million euros imposed on X in December 2025, even though this procedure did not specifically concern minors.