On Wednesday afternoon, as he was getting ready to head to high school football practice, Billy Stern learned that the social media giant Meta had reached a multibillion dollar settlement over claims that its platforms had harmed young users.

“I was just rooting against them,” Stern, 16, said in a phone interview.

The company agreed to pay up to $17.1 billion to states and to step up protections for teenagers on Facebook and Instagram, which allow anyone 13 and older to open accounts. Stern, a junior in Montauk, N.Y., said he agreed with the lawsuits’ premise: that the apps were designed for compulsive use.

“While I’ve used Instagram for a lot of positive things, and I think it can be used appropriately, I think there’s 100 percent a case there for the fact that they’re trying to target teenagers and make them addicted,” Stern said.

News of the settlement made waves among young people, who often voice conflicted views about the platforms where they spend vast amounts of their time. Just over half of teenagers reported spending at least four hours a day on social media apps in a Gallup poll conducted in 2023. In interviews, young people said that they saw the apps as valuable spaces to gather, as well as a waste of time. Many said they liked to use Instagram — or liked it so much that they found it hard to pull themselves away.

“You can easily accumulate an hour of just scrolling Instagram almost mindlessly,” said Rex Wolpoff, a 15-year-old in Weston, Conn. “You’re like, ‘Whoa, a whole hour of my day just went by.’”

In the landmark settlement, the company agreed to limit teenagers to two hours a day on Instagram and Facebook and automatically block the app between midnight and 6 a.m. (Parents can choose to turn off those time limits for their children.)

Meta also said it would disable “like” counts and give teenagers the ability to opt out of an algorithmically personalized feed.

“My initial reaction was, that’s kind of ‘Big Brother,’” Sophia, a 17-year-old in Arlington, Va., said of the new restrictions. She also cautioned adults against assuming all teenagers had negative experiences on social media.

“There are kids who are being cyberbullied; there are kids who are addicted and it is a problem,” said Sophia, who runs a U.S. history account on Instagram. “But there are also kids who are just casually using it, or maybe they’ve found a community online that they don’t have in the real world.”

She also thought it was likely that teenagers would find workarounds for any new time limits or age verification features. “If anything, it’s just going to make kids fake their age more.”

The company said it would invest more in age verification technology in order to identify young users and apply limits.

Wolpoff said he had been following the cases closely and was not hopeful that Meta’s platforms would become substantially safer for young users. While $17 billion is a staggering number, he pointed out that it represented a small share of Meta’s revenue. He also noted that $5 billion of the payout is contingent on the platforms Snap, TikTok and YouTube also agreeing to settlements with states that include financial penalties and product changes.

“They are sort of hedging on paying this money,” he said, “so that they make sure that they are not losing ground in this social media industry.”

Teenagers have said to researchers that social media help them feel more connected to their friends, but worry that the platforms harm their mental health, sleep habits and productivity. In a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2024, about half of teenagers said social media had a mostly negative effect on people their age. Forty-five percent said they spend too much time on the platforms.

Wolpoff said he thought it made sense for Meta to remove metrics such as likes, which can result in teenagers comparing themselves to others. “If you click on someone’s profile and they have twice or three times the number of followers you have, that can become a source of jealousy and a source of insecurity,” he said.

But Wolpoff and Stern both thought it unlikely that many young people would disable their algorithmic feeds, especially given that they are already accustomed to watching videos tailored to their interests.

The changes come as schools around the country have made efforts to physically keep young people away from their phones. Though products like fabric pouches with magnetic locks have helped in some schools, plenty of students have found ways to circumvent the rules.

Other teenagers have tried (and sometimes failed) to cut back on their own social media usage. Althea Juntunen, 16, a junior in Boulder, Co., tried an app to keep herself from scrolling when she really needed to sleep. It worked “for a while,” she said.

She thought Meta’s new time limits were a good idea, but she wondered how they would hold up against enterprising teenagers. “Everyone finds loopholes when they want to go on social media,” she said.

For some, the limits did not seem particularly worrying. Mae Hsiao, a 10th grader in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., said two hours each day would likely be plenty of time for her.

“I mostly use Instagram when I am bored of other apps,” Hsiao, 15, said, ranking TikTok as her most-used platform, followed by Snapchat, with Instagram in a distant third. She added that the new overnight restrictions, which will ban young users from using the app between midnight and 6 a.m., might be “annoying” on nights when she is up late.

As for Facebook, Hsiao said she had an account but that she “almost never” used it. “I have it on my phone because sometimes I like to see what my parents are posting.”