Consider This from NPR - Can a landmark settlement protect children from social media?

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

The owner of Facebook and Instagram has agreed to change the way its platforms work.  Can those changes be enforced? And are they enough to protect the mental health of young people? Major changes are coming to the way young people experience Facebook and Instagram.They're part of a proposed landmark multi-billion dollar settlement between Meta and several states over claims its social media platforms knowingly hook young people.Meta has denied the allegations raised in the lawsuit brought by a coalition of states.This episode was produced by Kai McNamee, Marc Rivers and Karen Zamora, with audio engineering by Ted Mebane. Our director is Jonas Adams.Our interim executive producer is Courtney Dorning, who edited this episode along with Sarah Handel, Christopher Intagliata and Diane Webber.Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

It's consider this, where every day we go deep on one big news story. Today, major changes are coming to the way young people experience Facebook and Instagram. It's part of a proposed landmark multi-billion dollar settlement between several states and meta over claims that its social media platforms knowingly hook young people. The data is clear. More time on social media tends to be correlated with depression, anxiety, body image issues, susceptibility to addiction, and interference with their daily life, including learning. California Attorney General Rob Bonta was representing his state in the case.

If you're a parent like I am, or a guardian, or a teacher, or a health care provider, sadly, you've likely seen some of that play out in real life. Banta spoke Wednesday in this video address. We protect our children from so many daily dangers, but we can't adequately protect them from harms, meta hides, and lies about, or from designs that are built to suck our children in, with the settlement that is changing. Meta has denied the allegations raised in the lawsuit

brought by a coalition of states. As part of the settlement, Banta says the company has agreed to changes limiting how children can use its apps, things like no more unlimited scrolling, eliminating filters that let children alter their appearance, and restricting usage during school hours or late at night. Consider this. The owner of Facebook and Instagram has agreed to change the way its platforms work.

Can those changes be enforced, though? And are they enough to protect the mental health of young people? From NPR, I'm Adrian Flodido. It's considered this from NPR. Attorney General Phil Weiser of Colorado was in the courtroom, arguing on behalf of a coalition of states that META knowingly designed its platforms to be addictive to children while hiding the harms they cause.

He joins us now. Attorney General Phil Weiser, welcome. It's great to be with you. The settlement includes both cash penalties and an agreement by meta to place limits on how children, people under 18, use their apps. Let's start with those limits. What are the most critical ones to your mind? The pain that I have felt hearing about kids and families were they weren't sleeping at night because they got notifications and alerts all through the night. They were distracted at the school day, spending an hour or more on their phones responding to social.

media when they should be focusing on school. That's going to change. Meta is now going to have quiet periods, no notifications, no alerts, no enticement to get on the platform, what are you missing during the school day or when kids need to be sleeping. Now, there are a bunch of other limits that include caps on the total amount of time that include what are called productive pauses, encourage people to get off, but when you say to me what is most important, I want our kids to get a good night's sleep. I want them focused in school and social media has been a big problem on both of those fronts, and that's going to change. How do you enforce these limits?

How do you force meta, for example, to make sure that kids can't just, you know, pose as an adult to open an Instagram account that's not subject to these limits? One of the requirements of this decree is going to be age assurance that we're going to be able to prevent kids from pretending that they're of an appropriate age. So kids under 13, they're not allowed to join Instagram or be marketed to without parents. consenting. And if kids are currently wanting to be on Instagram, it's been really easy because you put in your actual birthday and they say you can't join. So then people get the memo. They put in a different day and they join. There's been a lot of ways in which Instagram has been well aware this is happening and kids under 13 are on the platform. That's going to stop. We're going to now

put in effective age assurance and effective protections so that underage kids are not getting on the platform. And there's going to be an auditor who's going to oversee the conduct of the company. and we're going to hold them to account. We're going to make sure they follow these rules. This is going to be a game changer. Let's go to the money part of this settlement. $17 billion in penalties paid to the states over 10 years. Does Colorado have specific plans for that money?

My general plan is this money has a very clear intended purpose addressing a youth mental health crisis induced in considerable part by social media. So that's the focus. How do we help our kids? And I'm going to actually be talking to parents who've lost kids. I'm going to be talking to kids. And I'm going to be asking the question, how do we make sure these funds help address a crisis that has been top of my mind and top of my work? Attorney General, there was another landmark settlement back in the 90s, the 1998 tobacco settlement that was supposed to fund state anti-smoking programs.

And states ended up using a lot of that money for things not related to smoking at all. How are you going to make sure that this meta settlement money will actually benefit kids on this issue that's very important to you? I'm not going to tolerate any misuse or misdirection of these funds. I'm an unique position because I'm finishing my terms of Attorney General getting ready to get elected with voters supporting me to be the next governor in Colorado, which means I'm going to have some oversight and abilities to be involved in this going forward. And what happened with tobacco is terrible because the money was not directed to its intent. and really necessary use. We actually had a youth vaping crisis that came up because we had failed to keep our eyes on the ball.

I'm going to keep my eyes on this ball. I'm going to make sure this money goes to where exactly needs to go. When I handle a similar situation with opioids, I had a similar moral commitment that the money that we got from deaths because of overdoses had to go to address the opioid crisis. I feel the same way here. This money has to go to address youth mental health. I will not tolerate it going elsewhere. Meta did release a statement today after the announcement of this settlement, saying that its success is going to depend on other social media platforms like YouTube, like TikTok, also reforming how they do business.

Have you had any conversations that lead you to believe that these other companies are going to follow suit here? We are focused on this set of companies that you note. TikTok has very similar features. that raise the same sorts of concerns. Snap and YouTube as well. And the need is for industry-wide relief. So there are cases that are mounting against TikTok, but the precedent we're setting here

is one that we intend to follow and pursue across the industry. I've been speaking with Phil Weiser, Attorney General of Colorado. Thank you. Thank you. A big question in all of this is whether the changes to Facebook and Instagram

can actually make a difference for the mental health of young people. That's a question. My co-host, Elsa Chang, asked health correspondent Retoo Chatterjee. So what are these specific changes that Meadow will have to make for younger users? So the list of changes is, in fact, substantial. They include setting up a default daily time limit of two hours for users under 18.

And those restrictions can only be lifted by a parent. There will be a default nighttime block between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. There will be a block on notifications for minors during the nighttime and during school hours. So 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. during the school year. There will also be a ban on showing minors how many likes or reactions they have to their posts. Wow, these seems like pretty sweeping changes, right?

How are advocates and researchers reacting to this news? Pretty positively. Here's Julie Schelford. She's a former journalist who founded a grassroots organization called Mothers Against Media Addiction. It was certainly great news to wake up to this morning, and it's an important victory in our fight to hold big tech account.

accountable. Meta agreeing to this settlement further shows what was made crystal clear in the other recent trials, which is that the company intentionally designs their algorithms to addict our children. And in doing so, she says that they contributed to the youth mental health crisis in this country. Now, I should add that Meta has denied the allegations brought by the states and chose to settle the case. Right, they settled. So do we know whether these changes will make these platforms any less addictive. Well, let's try to understand some of the evidence behind these proposed changes. Let's start with nighttime use and its effect on teens. I spoke with Dr. Jason Nagata. He's a pediatrician at the University of California, San Francisco, and he researches kids'

online behaviors. Now, his recent study showed that over half of the teenagers participating in a large study are using their phones between midnight and 4 a.m. And the most used app category during this period was social media. So I think that it is likely that most of these teenagers are using nighttime use are on social media and getting the notifications and kind of distractions that are impairing their sleep. And we know that sleep is crucial for a teen's brain development and mental health. I mean, sleep is crucial for everyone. So interrupted sleep is a huge problem. I can relate. I imagine that interrupted school hours are also a big problem, yeah. Exactly. And that's something Nagata has looked into as well. And he and his colleagues,

found that teenagers are using their cell phones for an average of an hour during school days, and most of that time spent on social media. So he's hopeful that cutting back on nighttime and school time social media use, for example, will have a positive impact on teen mental health. But he also adds that, you know, the devil will be in the details of how meta goes about making these changes. As the trial revealed some safety features that the company had already put in place for teen accounts, for example, Instagram's take a break reminder,

wasn't as effective as they'd hoped. And we also know that teens can and do lie about their age on these platforms. So it's a big question where the meta gets serious about age verification, which will determine how effective these changes will be. Let's end P.R's Reto Chatterjee. This episode was produced by Kai McNamee, Mark Rivers,

and Karen Zamora, with audio engineering by Ted Mebain. Our director is Jonas Adams. Our interim executive producer is Courtney Dorning, who edited this episode. along with Sarah Handel, Christopher Intaliata, and Diane Weber. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Adrian Fledivo.