How Facebook and Instagram will change after Meta's $18B settlement - and where the money is going

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Meta has announced that it agreed to a settlement in a landmark child safety lawsuit, and sweeping changes are coming to Facebook and Instagram as a result -- plus $18 billion in funding for online safety initiatives, youth mental health, and other programs.

The lawsuit, which alleges the tech company purposefully designed Facebook and Instagram to be addictive to minors, misled the public about how safe the platforms were, and illegally harvested private data from teen users, was brought by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from nearly every US state.

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Meta maintains it did nothing wrong but is settling the case to avoid legal proceedings. This settlement involves large-scale changes to the company's social media platforms (all designed with young users' mental health and online safety in mind) and a significant financial penalty.

Here's a look at what's going to be different and where that money is going.

Meta will now enforce a hard limit of two hours a day for users under 18 -- across both Facebook and Instagram combined and across multiple accounts. This setting is on by default, but parents can override it.

Teen accounts will not be able to access Meta apps at all between midnight and 6 a.m., regardless of how much time teens have otherwise spent on the platforms. This setting can only be turned off by a parent.

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By default, teens will not see the number of likes and reactions on their own posts or posts from others.

There's now a much smaller window when push notifications will come through to a teen account. Push notifications will be silenced from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. and during school hours from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. During those hours, Meta says the only alerts that will come through are direct messages and alerts about account security or safety.

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To encourage "intentional use," teens will get prompts after every 15 minutes of continuous screen time on Meta apps and when their total daily usage hits 60 minutes and 90 minutes.