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In a landmark development, Meta reached a settlement on Wednesday with US states over claims it designed Facebook and Instagram to hook children.

Here are the main terms:

The money

Meta will pay in 10 annual instalments totalling about $11.7 billion, with a further $5bn payable only if rival platforms sign comparable agreements — a maximum of $16.7bn.

Separately, the company would pay $75 million toward the states’ legal costs and $459m to settle older claims tied to the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

States are expected to spend the money on youth mental health programmes, crisis lines, after-school activities and digital literacy, though final decisions rest with state legislatures.

Nighttime block

Within six months, teenage accounts would by default be locked out of Facebook and Instagram from midnight to 6am local time.

Messaging and settings would stay available but stripped down so teens cannot use them to reach the wider app. Push notifications would be switched off from 10pm to 7am.

Daily time limit

Teen accounts would default to two hours of cumulative daily use across Meta’s apps, resetting at midnight. Messaging and long-form video do not count toward the total.

Neither the curfew nor the cap can be changed by a teenager without a parent’s approval and the limits can be tightened.

If competing platforms adopt equivalent commitments, the overnight block widens to 10pm to 7am and the daily allowance drops to 60 minutes per app, capped at two hours across all of them.

Notifications would be silenced during school hours, defined as 8am to 3pm on weekdays between August 15 and June 15.

Within four months, teens would be offered a feed that is not algorithmically personalised. Like counts would be hidden by default and cosmetic surgery filters barred.

Age checks

Meta has one year to deploy an accurate age assurance system: age-checking tools must mistake no more than three per cent of 13- to 15-year-olds as adults, and no more than 10pc of 16- and 17-year-olds.

New accounts whose age is unverified after 14 days are treated as teen accounts regardless of the age stated.

For users under 13, who are barred from the platforms under US law, Meta must presume a reported account is underage absent evidence otherwise and check the friend networks of deleted accounts for other underage users.

Role of parents

Parents supervising a teen account would get daily notifications of time spent, prompts to review settings and the power to adjust school hours.

Meta must respond to teens reporting illegal or offensive content within six hours in at least 90pc of cases filed in English or Spanish.

An independent auditor, chosen jointly by Meta and a committee of states and paid for by the company, would monitor compliance of the overall settlement for 10 years.

As per a press release from Meta, these restrictions are only applicable in “participating US states and territories”, with the company pledging to “continue to work with parents, policymakers, and regulators around the world to further our shared goal of supporting teens and empowering parents online”.

Meta called on YouTube and TikTok to adopt similar measures, linking the complete implementation of the lawsuit’s terms to their rivals’ participation.

This settlement, which a federal judge quickly approved, resolves claims by 29 states that Meta deliberately engineered its platforms to hook young users, misled the public about the risks and unlawfully collected data from children under 13.

Fifty-one states and territories, plus Washington DC, initially settled with Meta. Texas reached a separate agreement with the company, which increased the total payout to around $18 billion.

The changes to how young people use its apps go further than anything Meta has accepted before, and follow years of criticism from parents and experts over the effects of the world’s biggest social media platforms on children.

Anger over the impact of Instagram and Facebook — as well as rival apps such as Snapchat and TikTok — has driven the spread of age limits and school phone bans around the world.

However, Meta still faces thousands of additional personal injury claims and litigation from school districts.

The case by the 29 states was among the most far-reaching, with Meta warning that a courtroom loss could have exposed it to more than $1 trillion in penalties.