Meta settlement backs competitors into a corner on kids safety
The Hill · C · trust 63/100
Comments: by Miranda Nazzaro - 08/29/26 6:00 AM ET Comments: Link copied by Miranda Nazzaro - 08/29/26 6:00 AM ET Comments: Link copied Noah Berger, Associated Press Olivia Konar holds a banner with names of young people who advocates say died as a result of social media outside the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse on Aug. 18, 2026, in Oakland, Calif. Her sister Coco Konar died in 2022 when she was 17. Meta’s settlement with nearly every state in the country is putting some of its biggest competitors on notice as the Instagram and Facebook parent firm tries to steer an industry standard on kids online safety.
After years of scrutiny, the company agreed to pay billions of dollars to states and make significant changes to better protect kids on its platforms, but not without putting the spotlight on competitors TikTok and YouTube to do the same.
In announcing the settlement, Meta published an open letter calling on YouTube and TikTok to “follow their lead,” arguing it is the way for “meaningful progress to happen.” Full-page print advertisements on the letter are running in major newspapers throughout the weekend .
While the letter publicly calls out the company, multiple platform changes and monetary awards in the settlement are contingent on other platforms’ responses.
“If you are a target, you want to show that this is a much larger, insidious challenge, and that you are one of many and that you shouldn’t alone be called out,” said Eric Schiffer, CEO of Patriarch Organization, a technology and media private equity firm.
“And in the process, you are ensuring that others may contribute financially, as well as influence resolving the matter as a whole,” Schiffer added, calling the move “strategically sound.”
This past week’s settlement effectively ended a high-profile trial in California deciding whether Meta knowingly designed its platforms to keep minor users addicted and misled the public about the apps’ risks.
The settlement allows Meta to position itself in the national kids online safety fight more favorably after being hammered by parents and lawmakers for years over its platforms’ impact on young users’ physical and mental health.
“Meta wants to control the variables,” Schiffer said.
Under the settlement with 47 states, the District of Columbia and some U.S. territories, Meta will pay up to $17 billion in the next decade. Separately, Meta will pay Texas more than $1 billion over similar allegations , bringing the company’s total potential sum to just more than $18 billion.
This money will go to state efforts to prevent or reduce mental health or other harms associated with social media use.
But nearly a third — about $5 billion — of Meta’s payment rests on whether YouTube and TikTok match this figure and implement the same daily usage limits, nighttime blocks and age assurance measures.
It comes as Meta, YouTube and TikTok are facing thousands of similar lawsuits over their platforms’ impact on youth mental health. Other social media platforms not named in the letter like Snap , the parent company of Snapchat, and Roblox are also up against these types of challenges.
The changes set by the settlement include implementing a default daily time limit of two hours and a nighttime block on use between midnight and 6 a.m. for users under 18, both of which can only be turned off by a parent.
Should other social media firms agree, the daily time limit will drop to one hour, and the nighttime block will be expanded to cover 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., according to Meta and the state attorneys general.
“For meaningful progress to happen, we urge TikTok and YouTube to join us and state attorneys general in adopting this new standard, to ensure teens use social media in a healthy and responsible way,” the company wrote in a blog post Wednesday.
TikTok and YouTube have not publicly commented on the settlement and did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment. YouTube is owned by Alphabet, which also owns Google.
Meta also agreed to block notifications from its platforms from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. and during the school day — 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. from Aug. 15 to June 15. Teens will also receive prompts every 15 minutes they continuously spend on Facebook or Instagram, along with prompts when daily use hits 60 and 90 minutes.
Teens will also be able to turn off autoplay of content and will no longer see the number of likes and reactions on their own or others’ posts or have the option of cosmetic surgery or makeup filters. The company added it is using “stronger” age assurance technology to better detect users lying about their age, an issue that has split lawmakers in Washington.
Meta, which told The Hill it reached out to “nearly every state” to collaborate on the changes, hopes the changes create a national framework for other social media firms to agree on.
The appetite for following Meta’s framework is unclear; TikTok and YouTube have not publicly commented on the settlement or letter.
The informal framework was met with mixed opinions across the technology policy landscape.
“The way that a young person or a family may think about YouTube and the consumption of it may be very different than the way they think about something like Instagram or Facebook, as is the way the platform operates,” Jennifer Huddleston, a senior fellow in technology policy at the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, told The Hill.
Huddleston used the example of autoplay on YouTube playlists, which are often used for how-to videos, documentaries or other information clips. On Meta platforms, autoplay is through content like video posts or Instagram stories continuously playing without a user scrolling.
“Does it make sense for Meta to be pushing to make…
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