If you’ve ever told your kid to get off Instagram only to hear “one second” approximately 47 times, Meta‘s latest announcement may be of interest. The company has agreed to a major new set of protections for teens on Instagram and Facebook, including one change which teens and parents will see over the next few months. Kids will have a default two-hour daily limit across the two apps. And that’s not all. SheKnows joined a call with Meta on Thursday, where Antigone Davis, Meta’s VP and Global Head of Safety, explained what parents can expect, and why the company says families shouldn’t have to tackle teen social media use on their own.
The agreement with a bipartisan group has received judicial approval, and most of its provisions are required to remain in place for 10 years.
During the call, one message came up consistently: Keeping kids safer online isn’t something parents or any single platform can solve alone. Davis stressed the importance of parents being involved not only with their own kids, but within their communities, because teen social media use (and safety) is ultimately a societal challenge. Beyond Meta platforms, there’s TikTok, X, and more—after all.
And while there are a lot of changes in the agreement, a handful could make a particularly noticeable difference in teens’ everyday scrolling habits.
What’s Actually Changing for Teens
The gist? The new protections will apply automatically to users under 18 in participating states and territories, rather than requiring parents to hunt through a maze of settings to turn them on.
Here are the biggest changes parents should know about with Meta’s rollout:
- A two-hour daily limit. Teens will be limited to a combined two hours per day across Facebook and Instagram. They won’t be able to turn the limit off without parental permission.
- No late-night scrolling. Facebook and Instagram will be blocked for teens from midnight to 6 a.m. by default. That includes Feed, Stories, Explore, and Reels. Direct messaging is excluded, so teens can still communicate with friends and family.
- Fewer school-day distractions. Notifications will automatically be silenced between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m., with exceptions including direct messages and safety or security alerts.
- More friction around endless scrolling. Teens will get a reminder after every 15 minutes of continuous use, plus additional prompts when their total daily use reaches 60 and 90 minutes.
- Parents get more control over the algorithm. Parents will be able to require their teen to use a non-algorithmic feed and turn off autoplay. Teens can choose those options themselves, too.
- Likes will be hidden by default. Teens won’t automatically see like and reaction counts on their own posts or other people’s.
- More parental visibility. Parents using supervision tools can receive information about their teen’s usage, attempts to change protective settings, secondary accounts they link, and potentially suspicious accounts they interact with.
Meta will also continue defaulting teen Instagram accounts to private, restricting potentially suspicious adults from contacting teens, and limiting teens to age-appropriate content. The company says it will strengthen technology intended to identify users who may actually be under 18 (or even under 13!) even when the birthday entered on an account says otherwise. We don’t know too many details on this yet, but we’ll be on the lookout for more info as it’s made available.
This Doesn’t Mean Parents Can Stop Paying Attention Though
Changes and improvements are great, but our jobs aren’t done. A lot of the features that make social media hard to put down (like autoplay, algorithmic recommendations, notifications and an infinite stream of content) will still be present. Our teens won’t necessarily say to themselves, “You know what? I’ve had enough Instagram for today. Time to put this down.”
While adding some friction could help, parental controls aren’t a substitute for conversations about what kids are actually doing online. That’s where Davis’ point about community matters. Parents can talk to their kids about what they’re seeing, establish family expectations around phones, and communicate with other parents about what’s happening online, especially as kids move between Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, group chats and whatever app parents haven’t heard about yet. Making improvements on Meta is just a part of the full story.
Meta itself acknowledges that problem. The company is publicly urging TikTok and YouTube to adopt similar protections, arguing that limiting teens on one platform doesn’t accomplish much if they simply move their scrolling somewhere else.
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