Meta Agrees to New Teen Safety Rules With 52 State Attorneys General

MENLO PARK, Calif. —

Meta announced an agreement with a bipartisan group of 52 state attorneys general, covering all 50 states, US territories, and the District of Columbia, that sets new default safety rules for teenagers on Instagram and Facebook, the company said in a statement Thursday. The deal still needs a judge's sign-off, according to Meta, which said most of the terms must stay in place for 10 years.

What Changes for Teens

Once approved, the rules would apply automatically to users under 18 in states that take part, Meta said. Teens would get a default two-hour daily time limit across both apps combined, which they could only turn off with a parent's permission, according to the company. The apps would also block teens from posting or viewing feeds, Stories, Explore, or Reels between midnight and 6 a.m., and would mute non-essential notifications on school days between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m., Meta said. Direct messages are excluded from all three restrictions so teens can still reach friends and family, according to the announcement.

Meta also said teens would get usage reminders every 15 minutes, plus additional prompts at 60 and 90 minutes of daily use. The company said teens would be able to switch to a feed that is not shaped by its recommendation systems, turn off autoplay, and hide like counts on posts, with parents able to make those settings mandatory. Meta said it will also block teens from using extreme makeup filters, expanding an existing ban on cosmetic surgery filters.

Age Verification and Parental Tools

Meta said it is investing in technology meant to catch accounts belonging to children under 13 and to better identify likely teen accounts even when a user enters a false birthdate. The company said it will keep defaulting teens into private accounts and 13-plus content settings, and will expand efforts to stop adults it flags as suspicious from contacting minors.

Meta said parents using its supervision tools would get new alerts, including when a teen links a second account, when a teen interacts with a flagged adult account, and periodic reports on a teen's app use and any attempts to change their safety settings.

The company said the agreement includes a financial payment to the states but did not specify the amount in its announcement. Meta also called on TikTok and YouTube to adopt the same standards, arguing that safety measures only work if they apply across every app teens use. Neither TikTok nor YouTube has commented on Meta's statement.