If a judge in Oakland signs this, a teen on Instagram and Facebook in a participating US state gets a new default: two hours a day, then the apps lock. Night Mode blocks the feed from midnight to 6am. Likes go dark. School-hour pings go quiet. Parents can loosen some of that. Teens cannot turn the time cap off by themselves.
That is the part I care about. Not the single dollar every desk wants to print.
Meta announced the agreement today, 26 August 2026, with a bipartisan group of attorneys general. California AG Rob Bonta called it a proposed settlement that still needs a consent judgment. The trial that started 18 August in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, in front of Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, stops if she approves it. A settlement is not a finding that Meta “addicted teens.” TechCrunch notes Meta is not admitting guilt. The BBC says Meta denied wrongdoing as part of the deal. I am treating it that way.
What actually changes on Instagram and Facebook
Pending that court OK, Meta says these defaults land automatically for under-18s on Instagram and Facebook in participating states and territories. Most terms last 10 years. The time cap and Night Mode start as a five-year commitment unless rivals sign on.
- Two-hour daily cap. Cumulative across Facebook and Instagram. Multiple accounts Meta thinks are the same person count toward the same clock. A parent can turn it off. The teen cannot. Direct messages do not count. The Verge also reports an exception for “longform content.” Meta’s own post does not use that phrase, so I am leaving it as The Verge’s reporting.
- Night Mode is an access block, not a mute. Midnight to 6am, teens cannot post or view Feed, Stories, Explore, or Reels. Messaging stays open. If YouTube and TikTok join the standard, Meta says those hours expand to 10pm–7am and the daily cap drops to one hour per app.
- School Mode mutes notifications from 8am to 3pm, except DMs and security or safety alerts. That is Meta’s writeup.
- Prompts after 15 minutes of continuous use, then again at 60 and 90 minutes cumulative.
- Optional non-personalized feed. Teens can set a feed that is not ranked by Meta’s recommendation systems as the default. Parents can force that setting. This is a recsys control, not a new model story.
- Hidden likes and reactions on their posts and other people’s, by default.
- Extreme makeup filters off, on top of the cosmetic-surgery filters Meta already blocked.
- Autoplay off if the teen (or a parent) chooses it. Then you tap or swipe for the next thing.
Bonta’s office lists the same two-hour cap and the same midnight–6am access block, and it adds a separate rule I will not mash into Night Mode: default blocks on notifications from 10pm to 7am, plus school-day mutes from 8am to 3pm between 15 August and 15 June. Those are different switches. One locks the app at night. The other silences the phone. The Verge reported the 10pm–7am window as a notification pause. Meta’s blog describes 10pm–7am as the future Night Mode access window, and only if peers join. I am not merging those sentences.
Age assurance is in the deal. Meta says it will spend more on catching under-13 accounts and on spotting 13-to-17 users who typed an adult birthday. The Verge, citing the terms, says the standard has to be independently tested, with a false-positive ceiling of 10% for ages 16–17 and 3% for ages 13–15. Meta’s post does not print those rates. An independent auditor reports to the states annually for five years.
The money is a structure, not one number
Do not flatten this into “$18 billion, period.”
Meta’s blog calls it a payment of approximately $18 billion over 10 years. About 70%, or roughly $12.7 billion, goes out either way. The other 30%, about $5.3 billion, only moves if two things happen: YouTube and TikTok put in a one-hour daily limit, Night Mode, and age assurance, and each of them pays an amount that matches that 30% figure. Half of the leftover is tied to YouTube’s check. Half to TikTok’s. Meta also says it will book about $10 billion as a Q3 2026 legal expense.
Bonta’s release says “up to $17 billion” over ten years, with California in line for $1.5 billion to $2.1 billion if the court signs. The Verge has $17.1 billion, and it also flags the $5.3 billion as contingent on YouTube and TikTok matching time limits and paying an equivalent amount. TechCrunch’s 9:03am PDT piece uses $18 billion and the same 30% / $5.3 billion holdback. I am not picking a winner. I am telling you who said which figure.
29 states at trial. A bigger group on the deal. The counts do not match.
The federal trial that just stopped was the 2023 case brought by 29 US states. The Verge says the settlement resolves claims from a larger group of 47 states plus districts and territories.
Meta’s own post lists 52 attorneys general across states, territories, and DC. Bonta’s office says a coalition of 51. Those are their numbers, not mine. The BBC notes New Mexico is not in this deal. It already has its own case. I am not going to reconcile 47, 51, and 52 into one clean map. The filing and the AG release do not agree, and a recap should not pretend they do.
What this is not
It is not a verdict. Gonzalez Rogers still has to enter the consent judgment. Until then it is paper.
It is not Meta saying, in court, that it addicted anyone. The states alleged compulsive design and that Meta misled families about risk, including under a federal child-privacy law. The company is paying and changing the product. That is not the same as an admission.
It is not an AI story. The feed change is about whether a teen can default out of a personalized ranking system. That is recommendation design. Leave the model labs out of it.
And the tighter night window, the one-hour cap, and a slice of the money only show up if YouTube and TikTok copy the homework. Meta already published an open letter asking them to. I would not hold my breath on the contingent third. I would watch whether the two-hour lock and the midnight block actually ship after the judge rules.
If you have a teen on these apps, the useful move is simpler than the press conference. See whether Night Mode is an access lock or just a mute. See whether DMs still come through at 1am. See whether the two hours is one clock across both apps. That is the product. The dollar is an argument between desks.