New rules will limit daily use, block overnight access and strengthen age checks for children and teenagers. Children under 13 aren’t supposed to be on Facebook or Instagram at all.
LANSING — Michigan parents soon could have considerably more help controlling how much time their children spend scrolling through Facebook and Instagram.
A landmark settlement between Meta and nearly every state, including Michigan, will establish a combined two-hour daily limit on Facebook and Instagram for users under 18, block overnight access and restrict notifications during school hours.
And for children younger than 13, the rules are even more fundamental:
They’re not supposed to be on Facebook or Instagram at all.
The settlement requires Meta to strengthen its technology for identifying children under 13 who claim to be older and removing them from its platforms.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said the settlement could fundamentally change children’s experiences with social media.
“For too many years, social media platforms have traded our children’s mental health for engagement on their apps,” Nessel said.
Meta has denied wrongdoing.
The agreement still must receive court approval, and many of the new protections will take time to implement.
Two Hours A Day On Facebook And Instagram
Under the settlement, children and teenagers will have a combined default limit of two hours per day across Facebook and Instagram.
That means two hours total — not two hours on Facebook followed by another two hours on Instagram.
The limit can be changed with parental permission.
Meta also must introduce what the settlement calls “Productive Pauses” after 15 minutes of continuous use and again after 60 and 90 minutes of total daily use.
The idea is to interrupt the endless scrolling that the states alleged was deliberately designed to keep young people engaged.
Children also will face an overnight block restricting access between midnight and 6 a.m.
During the school year, Meta will eliminate push notifications on weekdays between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m.
Other changes include stronger parental controls, safer content settings and restrictions on social-comparison features including beauty filters and visible “like” counts.
An independent auditor and the settling states will regularly assess whether Meta is actually implementing the protections and whether they work.
PARENT & GRANDPARENT GUIDE: What About Children Under 13?
The settlement treats younger children differently from teenagers, and the distinction is important for families.
Facebook And Instagram
Children younger than 13 aren’t supposed to have Facebook or Instagram accounts.
The settlement doesn’t create a restricted Facebook or Instagram account for a 4-year-old or 8-year-old.
Instead, Meta must strengthen its age-assurance technology to identify children who claim to be older than they really are.
Meta already uses artificial intelligence to estimate whether some users may be lying about their ages. Under the settlement, it must strengthen those systems, incorporate additional tools and submit them to independent testing.
If Meta determines that someone is younger than 13, the child is supposed to be removed from the platforms.
Meta also will be required to examine the ages of a removed child’s online friends for signs that they, too, may be under 13.
What About TikTok?
TikTok generally requires users to be at least 13 to have a regular account.
That means a 4-year-old or 8-year-old should not have his or her own regular TikTok account.
But here’s an important limitation of the Meta settlement:
TikTok isn’t currently covered by it.
Neither are YouTube and Snapchat.
So a child who spends hours watching TikTok or YouTube isn’t suddenly subject to Meta’s two-hour Facebook-Instagram limit.
That makes the distinction particularly important for parents and grandparents. Limiting Facebook and Instagram does not necessarily limit a child’s total daily screen time.
YouTube Is Different
YouTube provides options specifically intended for younger children.
YouTube Kids offers a more restricted selection of content for children, while Google also allows parents to establish supervised YouTube experiences for children under 13.
Parents can select content levels and control aspects of the child’s experience through Google’s Family Link.
That makes YouTube different from Facebook and Instagram, where children under 13 aren’t supposed to maintain accounts.
What About Teenagers Ages 13 Through 17?
Teenagers can continue using Facebook and Instagram, but their experience will change significantly.
Among the protections:
- A combined two-hour default daily limit on Facebook and Instagram.
- Mandatory breaks during extended scrolling.
- An overnight access block from midnight to 6 a.m.
- No push notifications during designated weekday school hours.
- Stronger age-assurance measures.
- More parental controls.
- Restrictions on beauty filters and visible “like” counts.
- Stronger protections against bullying and content promoting eating disorders, suicide and self-harm.
The settlement also seeks to prevent teenagers from simply claiming to be adults to escape the restrictions.
Meta will be expected to use age-assurance technology to identify users ages 13 through 17 who appear to be operating adult accounts and move them into age-appropriate experiences.
Could TikTok And YouTube Eventually Face Similar Limits?
Possibly — and that’s one of the most interesting provisions in the settlement.
The agreement creates a financial incentive for competing platforms to adopt comparable child-safety protections.
If TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat adopt comparable terms, Nessel’s office says the daily limit would drop to 60 minutes on each participating platform and remain in place for 10 years.
That could dramatically expand the settlement’s impact.
For many younger Americans, Facebook isn’t their primary social-media destination. Restrictions extending to TikTok and YouTube could therefore affect children’s daily digital habits much more broadly than restrictions on Meta alone.
For now, however, parents shouldn’t interpret the settlement as imposing a universal two-hour social-media limit.
It doesn’t.
Will These Changes Actually Work?
That remains an open question.
The settlement represents some of the strongest restrictions Meta has ever accepted for young users, but child-safety advocates already are cautioning parents against assuming Facebook and Instagram suddenly have become harmless.
Some safeguards are automatic. Others remain optional.
And restricting the amount of time a child spends on a platform doesn’t necessarily change what the child sees while using it.
Former Meta engineering director Arturo Béjar, who testified in the federal trial that ended with the settlement, has argued that Meta still needs to address how its recommendation systems deliver potentially harmful material to teenagers.
The effectiveness of the settlement therefore could depend heavily on enforcement, age verification and whether independent auditors can determine that the protections actually work.
Michigan Also Gets At Least $171 Million
The settlement isn’t only about changing Facebook and Instagram.
Michigan also is guaranteed more than $171 million from Meta over the coming decade and potentially could receive substantially more.
Nessel has called the overall agreement a “down payment” toward creating a healthier social-media environment for children.
But a MITechNews review of the settlement documents found something important:
The agreement does not require Michigan to spend its settlement proceeds helping children.
Michigan’s state-specific provision allows the money to be used for “any lawful purpose.”
MITechNews contacted Nessel’s office seeking clarification about how Michigan intends to use the money. Her office had not responded as of publication.
That raises a second question separate from what happens on children’s phones:
Who gets to decide what Michigan does with more than $171 million — and will any of it be spent addressing the harms to children that produced the settlement in the first place?
On Friday, MITechNews will follow the money, examining how much Michigan could ultimately receive, who controls the proceeds and why some other states placed more restrictions on how their settlement money can be spent.
