On 26 August Meta announced a settlement with 51 attorneys general across American states, territories and the capital, changing how Instagram and Facebook work for under-18s. The settlement awaits court approval, and applies only in the participating jurisdictions.
Time first
Two hours a day as a default limit, counted across both apps together, which a teenager can raise only with a parent’s permission.
With it come prompts: one after every fifteen minutes of continuous scrolling, then at sixty minutes, then at ninety.
Night and school hours
A default block from midnight to 6 in the morning: no posting and no browsing the feed. Direct messages stay on, so a teenager is not cut off from their family.
And between 8 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon, notifications are muted apart from messages and safety alerts.
What disappears from the screen
Like counts are hidden from teenagers, on their own posts and on other people’s.
Cosmetic surgery filters and exaggerated makeup filters are blocked.
The algorithmically ranked feed becomes optional, autoplay can be switched off, and an Instagram account defaults to private.
What reaches a parent
A notification when a teenager links a secondary account. An alert about suspicious adult contact. Periodic usage reports.
The cost
Around $18 billion over ten years: roughly $12.7 billion paid to the participating states, and $5.3 billion contingent on competitors joining.
Meta is inviting TikTok and YouTube to join, offering tighter limits in return: one hour per app, and a night mode running from 10 at night to 7 in the morning. Most terms bind for ten years, with the time limit and night mode running five, extending to ten if the industry adopts the standard.
And what about us
None of this applies in Kuwait. The settlement is an American court matter, and Meta has not announced extending it.
But what is genuinely available here: teen accounts work worldwide on Instagram, Facebook and Messenger, and in June 2026 Meta rolled out its “13+” content setting globally after starting in India in April, and gathered parental tools into a single “Family Centre” dashboard covering its apps. Anyone who wants some of this for their child today starts there, rather than waiting on a court decision in a distant state.
Photo: a classic alarm clock. By Santeri Viinamäki, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
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