EU lawmakers demand Meta extend teen safeguards to Europe

Meta Platforms ↗ 1.00% has agreed to pay up to $17.1 billion and implement sweeping changes to Facebook and Instagram to settle a landmark lawsuit brought by 47 states, the District of Columbia, and several U.S. territories alleging the company's platforms harmed children. The deal, announced last week during an ongoing trial in Oakland, California, has now rippled across the Atlantic, with European Union lawmakers on Wednesday demanding that Brussels force the company to extend similar protections to European children.cp24+2

What the Settlement Requires

Under the agreement, Meta will impose a two-hour cumulative daily time limit for teens across Instagram and Facebook, block access to feeds and reels between midnight and 6 a.m., mute notifications during school hours, hide "like" and reaction counts, and strengthen age-assurance technology to keep under-13s off its platforms. Parents can override some defaults, and teens will gain the option to switch to a non-algorithmic, chronological feed. The changes will be phased in, with a second phase tightening the overnight block to 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. and adding a 60-minute-per-app cap.techpolicy+2

About $12.1 billion to $12.7 billion is guaranteed and will be distributed to participating states over 10 years. The remaining roughly $5 billion is contingent on TikTok, Alphabet's ↘ 1.11% YouTube, and Snap ↘ 4.04% adopting comparable safety measures and making matching payments. Connecticut Attorney General William Tong signaled the pressure campaign immediately, telling those companies: "You're next".latimes+2

Meta admitted no wrongdoing. Its stock rose more than 1% on the news, as investors saw the outcome as far less costly than the roughly $200 billion in civil penalties the states had initially sought at trial.barrons+1

A Strategic Calculus

The settlement's structure has drawn sharp analysis. In an op-ed published Wednesday in the Los Angeles Times, Yale law professor Ian Ayres compared Meta's approach to the 1965 Supreme Court case United Mine Workers v. Pennington, in which large coal producers imposed uniform wage rules that disproportionately burdened smaller competitors. Ayres noted that the settlement exempts "longform content" — video of at least 22 minutes — from the daily usage cap, a carve-out that would spare YouTube's core business while squarely targeting TikTok's short-form model. National Review called the deal "unsatisfying," arguing it leaves the core algorithmic business model untouched and amounts to "regulation-by-settlement" rather than durable federal legislation.nationalreview+1

European Fallout

On Wednesday, EU lawmakers demanded that the European Commission conclude its ongoing Digital Services Act probe into Meta "without further delay" with a non-compliance decision and penalties. The Commission had already accused Meta in July of breaching the DSA through addictive design features such as infinite scroll, autoplay, and hyper-personalized recommendations. In April, it found Meta was failing to keep under-13s off its platforms. The U.S. settlement has intensified pressure on Brussels to act, with lawmakers arguing European children deserve at least the same protections now being promised to American teens.cnbc+5