Meta has run into serious trouble after facing allegations that it deliberately designed Instagram and Facebook to make children and teenagers addicted to its platforms. To resolve the issue, the company has agreed to pay a staggering $18 billion, roughly Rs 1.7 lakh crore, in compensation—marking the largest such payout by a tech company in American history.
Attorneys General from 48 US states presented evidence in court demonstrating that endless-scroll reels, like buttons, and frequent push notifications were severely affecting children’s brain development. According to the findings, these features were causing children to remain glued to their phones for hours, leading to depression, severe anxiety, sleep disorders, and eating-related issues. The $18 billion settlement amount will be distributed among the 48 states over a period of 10 years, and the funds are earmarked for mental health programmes for children in schools, summer camps, and the hiring of counsellors to promote digital awareness.
As part of the settlement, Meta is set to change several rules concerning teenage users. Children’s accounts will now have a default daily usage limit of two hours, and extending usage beyond that will require explicit parental permission. To prevent distraction during school hours, Instagram and Facebook will not send any push notifications to children during those times. To help children avoid the stress of comparing themselves to others based on the number of likes on their posts, the platforms will offer an option to hide or limit the visibility of like counts to others.
Automatic night mode and pause features will also be introduced to prevent children from using their phones late at night, effectively enforcing a break from app usage after a certain hour. Additionally, harmful content promoting body shaming, cyberbullying, and self-harm will be completely removed from children’s feeds.
However, Meta has attached a condition to the settlement. The company has stated that it will release 30 percent of the total penalty amount—approximately Rs 50,000 crore—only if competing platforms such as TikTok and YouTube also implement similarly strict child-safety measures. Meta has argued that unless such rules are applied uniformly across the industry, children would simply abandon one app in favour of another, undermining the purpose of the reforms.