{"id":1175674,"date":"2026-08-29T14:57:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T14:57:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1175674\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T14:57:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T14:57:15","slug":"new-facebook-and-instagram-changes-are-coming-for-teens-will-they-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1175674\/","title":{"rendered":"New Facebook and Instagram Changes Are Coming for Teens. Will They Help?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEarlier this week, Meta<\/a> settled a lawsuit brought by a coalition of state attorneys general and the District of Columbia, which claimed that the company\u2019s products \u2014 namely Facebook<\/a> and Instagram<\/a> \u2014 were harmful to children. One week into trial, Meta agreed to a settlement that would require them to pay up to a $17 billion penalty, as well as enact a handful of safety precautions <\/a>for accountholders 17 and under.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThese stipulations are extensive. Kids will only have access to Facebook and Instagram for two hours a day, and the apps will be blocked between midnight and 6 a.m. Additionally, notifications will be silenced during school hours (8 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays while school is in session), cosmetic-procedure filters will be disabled, likes and reaction numbers will be banned, and kids will have the option to have a non-algorithmic scroll, meaning posts will come through from the accounts they follow in the order they were posted, harkening back to the early days of social media. They will also be required to enact some sort of age verification process, though the details of how that will work are yet to be seen.<\/p>\n

\n\tOverall, experts say the changes are positive, so long as the company complies, and the independent auditor \u2014 another provision of the settlement \u2014 is able to do their job effectively. \u201cOf that long list of design changes that Meta has agreed to make, many of them are aligned with research,\u201d explains Kris Perry, executive director of Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development, a nonprofit that studies the effect technology has on kids. \u201cThose that are most aligned are the time limits, night mode, school mode, age assurance, and algorithmic feed control, autoplay, and hidden likes. Those are the ones that researchers have been hammering away at for years, saying they\u2019ve created some of the most problematic use cases among children.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThe important thing now, Perry says, is to start studying how these modifications will change the way kids interact with the apps. \u201cTo ensure that we\u2019re getting the product to be as safe as it can possibly be, you\u2019d want to have a new study start right now, to establishing a baseline,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tCandice Feinberg, a clinical psychologist and cofounder of ROWI Teen and Parent Wellness Centers, which works with families experiencing problems with social media, also sees the changes as positive. \u201cI think they\u2019re great ideas,\u201d Feinberg says. \u201cThat\u2019s one of the things I like about the whole settlement. Every toy comes with instructions, right? The fact that we have not had any structure for kids around social media has been a problem.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tShe points to the algorithmic change as particularly helpful. \u201cNot having an algorithm, it reminds me of when [social media] first came out, [it] was just our friends, so I think it\u2019s great,\u201d Feinberg says. These days, when kids click on a link\u00a0\u2014 even if it was an accident, or part of researching a school assignment \u2014 they\u2019ll start to see other social posts on the same topic crop up. \u201cIf that stuff is negative, that will have a tremendous effect on your mental health,\u201d she says. \u201cIf you\u2019re constantly bombarded with negative images or fear-based statements \u2014 it\u2019s difficult for adults, let alone kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMick Tobin, cofounder of the Young People\u2019s Alliance \u2014 which he describes as \u201clike the AARP but for young people\u201d \u2014 applauds the changes, particularly those to the algorithmic feed. \u201cYoung people I talk to go on their phones, they see one clip of, like, a person dieting, and then next thing they know, the next 10 posts are all about how to be skinny, and how skinny is in,\u201d he says. By eliminating that algorithmic drive, Tobin hopes that social media can go back to being a place where kids can interact and find community, without worrying that watching a single clip will entirely change what they see. <\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tHe also appreciates that they\u2019re hiding likes and reactions: \u201cA lot of young people, including myself, grew up really conscious of, \u2018How many likes did my post get?\u2019 If I don\u2019t get a certain amount of likes, my value is somehow diminished.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOne thing Tobin doesn\u2019t think will be very effective is the two-hour limit. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t say that I\u2019m necessarily opposed to the time limits, but I\u2019m not necessarily in favor of them either,\u201d he says, noting it\u2019s a nuanced problem. The dilemma: On one hand, things like a continuous scroll can suck kids into screens for hours; on the other, kids should have the right to access these apps at their own pace. Additionally, when told they cannot access something, kids will be inclined to find a workaround. \u201cYoung people don\u2019t like it when you tell them they can\u2019t do something,\u201d he notes.<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tThe question that remains is how apps will determine who is 18 or over on their platforms. Right now, kids 13 and over can set up teen accounts, but under the new guidelines, the company is required to \u201cinstitute robust age assurance measures to detect users under 18.\u201d While it\u2019s unclear how they will do that, the experts who spoke with Rolling Stone noted that the company is currently able to effectively do that to target ads. \u201cTo verify age sometimes requires either a photograph, fingerprint, or other identification of the child,\u201d explains Perry. \u201cHowever, it\u2019s been pretty well documented that without those things, that has been fairly accurate in estimating the age of children up to this point.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTobin also warns that this should be seen as a beginning, not an end, and as other lawsuits continue to play out in court, the focus should be on pressuring lawmakers to make industry-wide changes. \u201cWe need to make sure this is not seen by people as the job is done,\u201d he says. \u201cWe need to treat this as a failure of Congress, because if Congress had just passed safe guards years ago \u2014 like they had the opportunity to \u2014 then we wouldn\u2019t need lawsuits that take multiple years and taxpayer dollars to actually get these companies to do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this week, Meta settled a lawsuit brought by a coalition of state attorneys general and the District…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1175675,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5311],"tags":[600,459,598,49,978,659],"class_list":["post-1175674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-facebook","tag-instagram","tag-meta","tag-united-states","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117179386621911696","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1175674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1175674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1175674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1175675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1175674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1175674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1175674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}