Meta’s $18bn settlement may hasten reckoning for social media on child safety

As part of the settlement, the social media giant has agreed to make a number of changes to the way Instagram and Facebook operate for its youngest users.

Some experts say it is long overdue.

The new safety barriers include a two-hour time limit across both platforms, which will be a default setting for known teen users. But direct messaging on the platforms will not count towards the daily use limit.

Notifications will be muted between midnight and 06:00 and on school days between 08:00 and 15:00.

Likes on posts and content will also be entirely hidden on the platforms for teens.

Most of these new features will be made either default or an option for teens within six months.

However, new efforts by Meta to better identify which users on its platforms are children will take up to a year to be rolled out.

I would be surprised if these measures remain within the confines of the US for very long, as other countries will almost certainly be keen to adopt them too.

Meta also says the new features will only truly help children if all of its rivals adopt them as well.

It’s a highly competitive industry, but given the global backlash against social media and its impact on children, perhaps others like TikTok and Snapchat may have to follow suit.

The question then is whether children will still bother with them, once they are deliberately toned down into a much blander offering.

And perhaps that would bring the social media era to a natural end, as existing adults gradually aged out of it.

Arturo Bejar, the ex-Instagram engineer turned whistleblower, says the proof of the pudding will be in whether the new teen safety features are effective.

“At the end of the day, Meta needs to be held accountable for results, not efforts,” he told me.

Additional reporting from Kali Hays