Meta's $17.1B Settlement Forces Notification Blackouts During School Hours and Funds K-12 Programs
The multistate agreement requires Meta to disable teen push notifications from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on school days, impose daily time limits, and send billions to states for phone-free schools and mental health services.
Meta has agreed to pay up to $17.1 billion to 47 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands, settling claims that Facebook and Instagram were designed to addict children. The settlement, one of the largest of its kind, requires sweeping product changes that directly affect K-12 environments, including a ban on push notifications during school hours, a default daily time limit, and overnight access restrictions. Payments will be distributed in annual installments over ten years, with roughly 30 percent ($5.3 billion) contingent on YouTube and TikTok implementing similar safety features and paying matching amounts, according to the settlement agreement.
The settlement defines "School Hours" as 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday, between August 15 and June 15 each year, subject to adjustment by a supervising parent. During those hours, Meta must disable push notifications for teen users ages 13 to 17 by default, though messaging, account-security, and platform-integrity notifications are exempt. The agreement also requires a default daily time limit of two hours per day for teen users cumulatively across all Meta platforms at Phase I, resetting at midnight local time. A Phase II provision tightens this to 60 minutes per platform per day, not exceeding 120 minutes cumulatively, if triggered by contingent obligations. The daily limit excludes time spent on longform content, messaging, or settings, according to the settlement filing.
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