The $18 billion settlement with Meta, reached through an agreement involving 52 Attorneys General, should reassure parents across the country that social media giants are finally being forced to hear our calls for help.
As part of this landmark agreement, Meta has accepted some of the most robust child-safety concessions a social media company has ever made. Children will now be capped at two hours of daily use on Meta’s platforms, with limited access at night and during school hours. Night mode runs from midnight to 6 a.m., and notifications are silenced during school hours, effectively setting platform curfews meant to protect children during parts of the day when scrolling does the most damage.
The deal also restricts harmful beauty and cosmetic filters and strengthens parental controls, including break reminders and options that give parents more control over how teens use the platforms.
This is monumental. Parents are finally being given the controls we’ve been asking for, and platforms are finally adopting the default guardrails needed to defend one of our most vulnerable populations online.
But state Attorneys General and child-safety advocates are already warning that the settlement, on its own, isn’t enough. If a teen can be booted off Instagram after two hours only to spend the rest of the night on TikTok, YouTube or Snapchat, the protections lose most of their meaning. The broader debate over age assurance across major social-media platforms shows why protections that stop at a single company can only go so far.
That appears to be the reasoning behind Meta’s willingness to go even further if the rest of the industry, namely TikTok and YouTube, agrees to baseline standards. Under the agreement, additional restrictions and a portion of Meta’s payment are tied to TikTok and YouTube adopting comparable safeguards, including a one-hour daily limit and stronger night-mode protections.
That raises the larger question: What must be done to ensure children are protected across every platform, not just a select few? While most parents know about the potential dangers of social media, millions of other apps pose risks just as great, if not greater, and many parents have never even heard of them.
Florida’s congressional delegation has already offered an answer. A bipartisan group of Florida lawmakers has voiced support for the App Store Accountability Act, a federal bill co-sponsored by Florida Rep. Gus Bilirakis that would put meaningful controls directly in parents’ hands at the device level rather than requiring a separate lawsuit and settlement against every app on the market. The proposal has also moved through the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which reported H.R. 3149 to the full House. Several additional members of Florida’s congressional delegation have voiced support for the legislation, including Reps. Jared Moskowitz, Brian Mast, Anna Paulina Luna, Randy Fine and Byron Donalds.
The settlement ensures children are protected once they’re on Meta’s apps, but the App Store Accountability Act would require app stores to verify age categories and obtain parental consent for minors before they engage in covered app activity. That approach is designed to place the checkpoint at the app store level rather than leaving each platform to build a separate system. It makes the bill a natural complement to what Meta has just agreed to — and what YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat should also agree to.
State Attorneys General have taken notice. A bipartisan coalition of 27 state Attorneys General, led by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, backed Texas’ app-store age-verification law in court, arguing for states’ authority to require age verification and parental consent. Uthmeier has also pursued TikTok over alleged child-safety violations in Florida, reinforcing the broader push for stronger safeguards.
As a father, I don’t want to wait for another $18 billion settlement after years of lawsuits to protect my child from the next app. No parent should have to. The Meta settlement is a real victory for parents and worth celebrating, but the fight for our children won’t be finished until every parent, in every state, has the authority to decide what lives on their child’s phone. Congress has the bill before it.
It is time to pass the App Store Accountability Act.
___
Armando J. Ibarra is a Miami-based lobbyist and government affairs strategist with Advocacy + Insights.
