The UK government is urging Meta to implement safety measures for children in Britain comparable to those established in the United States, following a significant legal agreement that might cost the tech giant as much as $18 billion. As part of the U.S. settlement, Meta has committed to setting default protections for users under the age of 18. These include a daily usage cap of two hours, which can only be extended with parental consent, along with restrictions on overnight access and limitations on notifications during night and school hours.
British officials insist that young users in the UK deserve protections equivalent to their American peers. The UK is also in the process of crafting new rules concerning children’s access to social media, with proposals to prohibit under-16s from certain platforms and enforce overnight curfews on teenage users. These moves are part of a broader initiative to ensure online safety for young people and to hold social media companies accountable for the environments they create.
The legal settlement in the United States has amplified demands for tougher regulations on social media companies and has highlighted the need to address features that may contribute to excessive use. There is growing concern about platform designs that encourage prolonged engagement, such as infinite scrolling, autoplay functions, and algorithm-driven content recommendations, which can keep users, particularly young ones, hooked.
Nonetheless, some experts caution that while time limits and curfews are steps in the right direction, they may not fully solve the underlying issues related to these engagement-driven features. They argue that these measures might only partially mitigate the risks associated with the addictive nature of social media platforms, which are often engineered to maximize user engagement.