STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Meta has agreed to settle with the states that sued it.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Yeah. The states allege that the company knowingly designed social media platforms to be addictive to minors. Meta denies this. The proposed settlement requires Meta to pay up to 17 billion in penalties to states over 10 years. They also say they will make specific changes to Facebook and Instagram to make them safer for kids.
INSKEEP: NPR health correspondent Rhitu Chatterjee is here in Studio 31 to talk about this. Good morning.
RHITU CHATTERJEE, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: OK. So this is personal for you and me. We're parents.
CHATTERJEE: Yep.
INSKEEP: We're thinking about our kids. What kinds of changes has Meta agreed to make?
CHATTERJEE: So the changes involve both restricting the kind of content kids can see and features that will make their social platforms a lot less addictive.
INSKEEP: OK.
CHATTERJEE: So for example, they will have to give minors the option of having non-personalized feeds where Meta does not use an algorithm to throw specific content to keep them scrolling.
INSKEEP: Ah. OK.
CHATTERJEE: There will be a default daily time limit of two hours for minors, and only parents can opt out of that.
INSKEEP: Oh, meaning that the kid would have to say, Mom, Dad, can I...
CHATTERJEE: Exactly.
INSKEEP: ...Have an extra - OK.
CHATTERJEE: And the parents will have to agree. And so Meta will have to have a default block on nighttime use from midnight to 6 a.m. And a block on notification to minors both overnight and during school hours when they are in classrooms. There will also be a ban on showing minors how many likes or reactions they have to their posts.
INSKEEP: All this sounds good. Does it actually make kids safer, though?
CHATTERJEE: In theory, yes. So psychologist Mitch Prinstein co-directs the Winston Center on Technology and Brain Development at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. And in fact, he was scheduled to testify at the trial on Monday. Doesn't have to do that, of course. He told me that these constant notifications and likes and dislikes on platforms are not well suited for the preteen and teenage brain.
MITCH PRINSTEIN: By the time a kid turns around 10 or 11, the part of their brain that makes them suddenly super interested in things like popularity and who sits at what lunch table are really showing a hypersensitivity to social signals.
CHATTERJEE: And you can imagine when you have social platforms that give kids 24/7 access to how many followers they have, how many likes, that makes them hooked to social media. So getting rid of those notifications, especially during school hours and nighttime, should help make a big difference.
INSKEEP: I suppose there's still a lot riding on how Meta would execute these changes.
CHATTERJEE: Exactly. First of all, Prinstein told me that these changes will take years to implement, and there has to be close and careful monitoring of how Meta makes these changes and what impacts they have. And he also says there's a role for the government.
PRINSTEIN: We still need our state and federal government to act and to create regulations to make sure that as tech evolves, we continue to see that kids' safety is prioritized over profit.
INSKEEP: One detail here. In order to have these safety measures for kids, you have to know who a kid is.
CHATTERJEE: That's right.
INSKEEP: Social media companies have resisted requirements that kids show that they are minors or not minors.
CHATTERJEE: Right. And we know that kids lie all the time on social platforms about their age, right? And that's a problem that the settlement requires Meta to address with new measures to detect when a user is under 18, and we'll just have to see what the company does for age verification. So overall, you know, we still have to wait and watch how this plays out.
INSKEEP: NPR's Rhitu Chatterjee. Thanks for coming by.
CHATTERJEE: My pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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