TL;DR
- Meta said on 26 August 2026 it reached an agreement with 52 attorneys general across US states, territories and DC covering under-18s on Instagram and Facebook.
- Defaults include a two-hour daily limit cumulative across both apps, a midnight to 6am block, muted notifications from 8am to 3pm, and prompts every 15 minutes.
- The protections apply pending judicial approval only in participating US states and territories, and the majority of the terms must stay for 10 years.
- Meta states a payment of approximately $18 billion over 10 years, with 30 percent withheld until YouTube and TikTok adopt matching measures and pay a matching amount.
- Meta published an open letter the same day urging TikTok and YouTube to adopt the same standard, arguing restricted teens just move to another app.
Meta announced on 26 August 2026 that it has reached an agreement with a bipartisan group of 52 attorneys general across US states, territories and the District of Columbia. Pending judicial approval, the protections in that agreement apply automatically to under-18 accounts on Instagram and Facebook in participating US states and territories, and the majority of the terms are required to remain in place for 10 years.
The announcement sits on Meta's own newsroom, and the terms matter more than the headline, because the headline number and the product changes are two separate things. The product changes are defaults. They switch on for teen accounts without anyone opting in, and several of them can only be switched off by a parent. For anyone who plans, buys or measures Meta advertising against US teenagers, those defaults are the part that changes the media, not the payment.
What Meta agreed to change by default
Meta lists the changes in its announcement, published on 26 August 2026. Each one is a default state for an under-18 account rather than a setting a teen has to go looking for.
A default two-hour daily time limit
Teens get a default two-hour daily time limit that they can only turn off with a parent's permission. Meta states that the limit is cumulative across Facebook and Instagram, that time spent scrolling on both apps counts toward the same total, and that this includes cases where Meta detects that one person is running multiple accounts. Direct messaging is excluded from the limit, which Meta says is so that teens can stay connected with friends and family.
Night Mode
Night Mode is a default block from Meta's apps between midnight and 6am. Meta gives Feed, Stories, Explore and Reels as examples of what a teen will not be able to post or view inside that window. Direct messaging is excluded from Night Mode as well.
School Mode
Notifications are muted by default between 8am and 3pm. Meta states that during those hours teens no longer receive push notifications, with two exceptions: direct messages, and alerts about account security or safety. This is a mute on notifications, not a block on the app, so a teen who opens Instagram at lunchtime still sees it.
Prompts every 15 minutes
Teens receive a prompt after every 15 minutes of continuous screen time on Facebook or Instagram, plus further prompts when total daily usage reaches 60 minutes and 90 minutes. Meta describes these as designed to encourage intentional use. The announcement does not say that a prompt stops anything, only that it appears.
A non-algorithmic feed option, autoplay off and hidden likes
Teens will be able to choose a non-algorithmic feed option, one that is not personalised by Meta's recommendation systems, as their default, and Meta says it will periodically remind them that the option exists. Parents can adjust a teen's default experience to require that setting. Teens will also be able to turn off autoplay so content no longer plays by itself, with a tap or a swipe needed instead, and like and reaction counts are hidden by default, both on a teen's own posts and on other people's.
Filters, age assurance, content and contact
Meta adds extreme makeup filters to its existing block on cosmetic surgery filters for teens. It commits to stronger technology for catching accounts that may belong to under-13s, and for identifying accounts that are probably 13 to 17 even when an adult birthday was entered at signup. It says it will keep teens in 13plus content settings by default, inspired by movie ratings criteria and parent feedback, keep Instagram teen accounts private and Facebook teen settings private by default, and keep restricting potentially suspicious adults from finding, following or contacting teens. Meta also repeats its position that app stores should verify age and obtain parental approval before a teen downloads an app, and says it will keep advocating for legislation that requires this.
Parental controls, research and an outside auditor
Parents get new controls and insights under the agreement, including notification when a teen links a secondary account, alerts about interactions with potentially suspicious accounts, and periodic updates on a teen's usage and on any attempt the teen makes to change protective settings. The agreement also establishes an independent social media research foundation, which Meta will share consented user data with, and an independent auditor who will test Meta's compliance and report to the states annually for five years.
The five measures below are the ones that change how much teen attention is available on Meta's apps at all. The right-hand column is what each measure leaves untouched, which is where most of the misreading happens.
| Measure | Default for under-18s | What it does not cover |
|---|---|---|
| Time Limit | Two hours a day, cumulative across Facebook and Instagram, including accounts Meta detects belong to the same person | Direct messaging is excluded, and a parent can switch the limit off |
| Night Mode | Apps blocked between midnight and 6am, covering Feed, Stories, Explore and Reels | Direct messaging is excluded |
| School Mode | Push notifications muted between 8am and 3pm | Direct messages and account security or safety alerts still come through, and the app itself is not blocked |
| Regular prompts | Every 15 minutes of continuous screen time, plus at 60 and 90 minutes of daily use | Meta does not state that a prompt blocks further use |
| Algorithmic feed control | Teens can set a non-algorithmic feed as their default, with periodic reminders | Meta does not say how many teens are expected to choose it |
The payment, and which outlet reported which number
Social Media Today reported on 26 August 2026 that Meta agreed to pay more than $18 billion to settle the case, whose trial had begun in California the week before. Meta's own announcement carries the same figure in a section headed Financial Details, stating a payment of approximately $18 billion that can fund youth online safety initiatives among other state priorities, distributed in annual instalments over a 10-year period.
The structure of that payment is worth reading twice, because it is the mechanism that puts pressure on the rest of the industry. Meta states that participating states receive approximately 70 percent, around $12.7 billion, over the decade. The remaining 30 percent, around $5.3 billion, is released only after two conditions are met: YouTube and TikTok implement a one-hour daily limit, Night Mode and age assurance measures, and YouTube and TikTok each pay an amount matching that 30 percent figure, with half of the withheld money tied to YouTube's payment and half tied to TikTok's. Meta adds that it expects to accrue a legal expense of approximately $10 billion in the third quarter of 2026 related to the agreement, a charge it says was not contemplated in the expense range given on its second-quarter earnings call.
Pending judicial approval, and what the 10-year lock actually locks
None of this is in force today. Meta's own wording is that the protections apply pending judicial approval, which means a court still has to sign off before the defaults reach a single teen account. Meta gives no date for that approval and no date for when the settings begin rolling out, so any calendar you build around this is your own assumption rather than a stated timeline.
The 10-year figure also has an exception inside it. The majority of the terms are required to remain in place for 10 years, but Meta states that the Time Limit and Night Mode features start with a five-year commitment. If industry peers sign on to the agreement, that commitment extends to 10 years and the defaults get stronger: the daily limit drops to one hour per app, and Night Mode widens from midnight to 6am out to 10pm to 7am. In other words the strictest version of these rules is not the version announced, it is the version that only exists if TikTok and YouTube agree.
The open letter to TikTok and YouTube
Meta published a separate open letter on 26 August 2026 addressed to TikTok and YouTube, setting out the same list of commitments and asking both platforms to adopt them. The argument Meta makes for it is short and, on its own terms, hard to dismiss: teens move fluidly between dozens of apps a day, and when teens are restricted on one app they simply move to another. A two-hour cap on Instagram does not reduce the total hours a 15-year-old spends on a phone if TikTok is still open at 1am.
C.J. Mahoney, Chief Legal Officer at Meta, framed the agreement as a path for the whole industry rather than for Meta alone, and said its success depends on other platforms following. Read commercially, the letter and the withheld 30 percent of the payment do the same job from two directions. One asks TikTok and YouTube publicly, the other makes several billion dollars of state money contingent on their answer.
What is new here, and what this blog already covered
Relevant Audience previously covered a New Mexico court decision that fined Meta $567 million and capped teen app use in that state. That was one state's first-instance court ruling against Meta; this is a negotiated multistate agreement with 52 attorneys general, still pending judicial approval, with a 10-year term and a payment structure attached, which is a different legal object with a much wider footprint.
The two are related in substance. Social Media Today notes that the New Mexico ruling, finalised earlier this month, required Meta to halt push notifications for under-18s from 10pm to 7am and from 8am to 3pm during the school year, to hide like counts by default, and to cap teen usage at no more than 90 hours a month across Facebook and Instagram. The two-hour daily limit in the multistate agreement is the tighter number of the two. Social Media Today also reports that the case Meta settled had been brought by 29 attorneys general, a smaller group than the 52 who have now joined the agreement.
What it changes for anyone buying Meta ads against US teen audiences
The practical effect, if a court approves the agreement, is that there is less teen attention to buy in participating US states and territories, and that what remains is shaped differently. This is Relevant Audience's reading of the published terms rather than anything Meta states about advertising, because the announcement does not discuss ad delivery at all.
Four things follow from the defaults. A two-hour cumulative daily cap reduces the total teen session time available across both apps, so teen impressions get scarcer rather than cheaper. Night Mode removes a delivery window entirely between midnight and 6am local time for teen accounts, which matters for anyone who has been quietly harvesting cheap late-night inventory. School Mode mutes push notifications from 8am to 3pm, which suppresses the notification-driven re-entry that puts a teen back into the app mid-day. And a share of teens on a non-algorithmic feed option is a share of teens whose feed is not being optimised by the systems that most Facebook ads campaigns rely on for delivery, which makes the performance of that slice harder to predict.
None of that is a reason to redraw a media plan today, because nothing has taken effect. It is a reason to know which of your campaigns actually depend on the under-18 bracket in the United States, and to check whether your reporting even separates that bracket. Where teen reach is a stated objective rather than a spillover, the honest planning move is to model the same outcome with a different age composition before the defaults arrive, and to treat organic and paid social advertising reach against that audience as two separate exposures that will move at different speeds.
What this means for Thai marketers
Neither Meta's announcement nor Social Media Today's report mentions Thailand, and the agreement covers participating US states and territories only. Nothing here changes a single default on a Thai teenager's Instagram account.
What follows is Relevant Audience's reasoning, not a statement from Meta. Two things make this worth watching from Bangkok anyway. The first is that platform features built for one jurisdiction are usually built once. Night Mode, School Mode and a cumulative cross-app time limit are product engineering, and once the engineering exists the cost of extending it to another market is a policy decision rather than a build. The second is that the agreement is explicitly designed to become an industry standard, with money withheld until TikTok and YouTube match it. If that mechanism works, the shape of teen social media changes for reasons that have nothing to do with Thai regulation, and a Thai brand with a teen or young-adult audience inherits the result without ever being consulted.
The reasonable posture is neither panic nor indifference. Know what share of your reach sits under 18, know whether your creative strategy assumes algorithmic distribution, and revisit both if and when any of this moves outside the United States. Until then, this is US media planning news that Thai marketers should read for the direction of travel rather than for an action item.
The full list of terms, the participating jurisdictions and the financial structure are published by Meta Newsroom.
FAQ
Do these teen restrictions apply in Thailand?
No. Meta states that the protections apply to under-18s on Instagram and Facebook in participating US states and territories, and neither Meta's announcement nor Social Media Today's coverage mentions Thailand or any other country. There is no stated plan to extend the defaults beyond the United States.
Are the new defaults switched on now?
No, they are pending judicial approval. Meta's announcement says the protections apply pending judicial approval, and it gives no approval date and no rollout date, so nothing in the agreement is affecting a teen account today.
How much is Meta paying, and who reported the number?
Meta's own announcement states a payment of approximately $18 billion, paid in annual instalments over 10 years, and Social Media Today reported the same figure on 26 August 2026 as more than $18 billion. Meta adds that participating states receive around 70 percent, or roughly $12.7 billion, while the remaining 30 percent, roughly $5.3 billion, is released only if YouTube and TikTok adopt matching measures and each pay an amount matching that 30 percent.
Do the time limit and Night Mode block teen messaging too?
No. Meta states that its direct messaging features are excluded from Night Mode, Time Limit and School Mode restrictions, so a teen who has hit the two-hour cap or is inside the midnight to 6am window can still message. School Mode also lets through account security and safety alerts.
Will TikTok and YouTube have to do the same thing?
Not under this agreement, which binds Meta only. Meta published an open letter on 26 August 2026 urging both platforms to adopt the same standard, and roughly 30 percent of the payment is withheld until they implement a one-hour daily limit, Night Mode and age assurance measures and each pay a matching amount, but neither company is a party to the agreement and the source does not say how either has responded.
