Meta will pay up to $18 billion and cap teen use at two hours after the states' trial

Meta ended a federal trial in Oakland on Wednesday by agreeing to pay up to about $18 billion and to rewrite how teenagers use Facebook and Instagram. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers approved the filing the same morning. The money and the product rules cover 47 states, the District of Columbia and several U.S. territories. Texas settled separately for about $1 billion.

The guaranteed slice is roughly $12.7 billion, paid over ten years. The rest, about $5 billion, is due only if Snap, TikTok and YouTube accept similar time limits and make comparable payments to the states. Meta has already told those companies, in public, to join the deal.

What changes on the apps

Users aged 13 to 17 will face a default two-hour daily cap across Facebook and Instagram. Only a parent can lift it. Accounts will be blocked from midnight to 6 a.m. unless a parent overrides the curfew. Push notifications will be silenced in school hours, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., from mid-August to mid-June, and again overnight.

If the other platforms sign on, the daily cap falls to one hour and the night block widens to 10 p.m. through 7 a.m. Meta also agreed to hide likes and reactions from teens by default, including on their own posts. A non-personalised feed, one that does not rank content by predicted engagement, is due within four months. Broader compliance work is due within six months. Stronger age checks are due within a year.

Scientific American and the court papers also record a research foundation to study teenage well-being online, and on-screen prompts after every 15 minutes of continuous use.

What the states alleged

Attorneys general said Meta designed the products to keep young users on the apps, then misled the public about the harm. Four states in the California trial, California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey, had been prepared to seek figures in the hundreds of billions. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser called the product relief "well beyond what any court has ordered or is likely to order."

Meta admitted no wrongdoing. Shares rose as much as 4.1 percent on the day and closed up 1.1 percent. The company had already flagged, in its last earnings filing, a risk of "material loss" from the youth-safety cases. School-district and individual suits are still on the calendar.

The structure is the story

The contingent $5 billion is a pressure tool. Meta pays less if rivals stay outside the rules. It pays more if they come in, and then the whole sector is bound to a one-hour day and a longer night block. That is why the settlement is written as a floor plus a ratchet rather than a flat fine.

The product changes will apply nationwide to U.S. teen accounts. They do not, on the face of the papers, rewrite the apps for adults or for users outside the United States. Enforcement will rest on an independent auditor and on the age-assurance system Meta still has to build.

Parents who already use Teen Accounts will see the two-hour cap sit on top of those settings. Parents who want more time will have to say so inside the app. The default, for the first time, is a hard stop rather than a suggestion.