Meta recently announced major updates to its child safety features across Facebook and Instagram. These upcoming changes are part of a massive settlement agreement with multiple states across the country. Once the massive agreement is finally and officially approved, users under eighteen will face strict daily time limits, notification blocks during school hours, and changes to how their feeds display content on both of the platforms.
New rules bring daily time limits and night mode blocks
Under the new guidelines, teenagers will have a strict two hour daily time limit that covers their usage across both Facebook and Instagram. Parents will have the ability to override this restriction if they choose. A new night mode feature will also block younger users from viewing or posting content between midnight and six in the morning.
To minimize distractions during the day, a school mode will silence all notifications between eight in the morning and three in the afternoon. The apps will also send regular alerts after every fifteen minutes of continuous scrolling.
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Additional safety features include:
- An option for teens to use a non algorithmic feed that avoids personalized recommendations.
- The ability to turn off video autoplay by default.
- Hidden likes and reactions on posts.
- A ban on cosmetic surgery and extreme makeup filters for younger accounts.
Direct messages will remain exempt from the new time limits and notification blocks.
The company wants rival platforms to adopt similar safety limits
As part of the settlement, Meta will pay roughly $18 billion to help fund online youth safety programs across various states over the next ten years. However, the tech giant is currently holding back $5.3 billion of that total payment. It stated it will only release those funds if competitors like TikTok and YouTube agree to implement similar safety measures on their own platforms.
The company recently published an open letter calling on its rivals to match these efforts. If YouTube and TikTok agree to add their own daily limits and age verification tools, the social media giant promised to tighten its own rules even further. The proposed stricter rules would drop the daily limit to just one hour per app and expand the night mode block to run from ten at night until seven in the morning.
It is clear that the platform does not want to lose its younger audience to competitors. Pushing for industry wide rules ensures that teenagers cannot simply switch to another app once they hit their daily screen limit.
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