Are Facebook and Instagram like cigarettes? Like Doritos chips? Like the slot machines in a casino?

Humans love an analogy. I sure wanted one to help process yesterday’s news that Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, had settled with 47 states, agreeing to pay up to $17.1 billion in penalties and change its products to make them less addictive and dangerous for children.

All three metaphors work, but cigarettes are probably the most apt, given legal proceedings and fines that recall the battles over Big Tobacco in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Don’t focus on the money, though. Mike Isaac, who reports on big technology companies, told me that right away. The penalty’s the least important part. Meta made $200 billion in revenue last year. A $17 billion fine amounts to what he called a “speeding ticket.” Wall Street didn’t see it as a crippling sum — Meta’s stock went up.

Focus on the changes instead. They run counter to Meta’s business interest, which is to keep users on its platforms for as long as possible.

Eli Tan, one of our tech reporters, ran through them.

Time limits. Users under 18 will get just two hours a day on the apps, and none at all between midnight and 6 a.m. Notifications won’t be sent during school hours. Spend 15 consecutive minutes on Instagram or Facebook and a prompt will appear on the screen (though Meta didn’t say what the prompt might be). There’ll be another prompt at 60 minutes of use, and again at 90 minutes.

Disabling features. Teens will for the first time be able to turn off “autoplay” for videos and to turn off their algorithmic, personalized feeds. “Like” counts will also go away. Young users will no longer be able to use filters that alter their appearance with digital makeup or cosmetic surgery.

Stronger protections. Meta said it would introduce ways to prevent “unwanted contact from strangers,” though it did not lay out how that would work. It said there would be a new way for teens to report harmful content on the apps, and promised that it would respond to those reports promptly. It said the company would improve tools parents can use to monitor what their children are doing on the platforms.

Age verification. This is a big one. The whole enchilada rests on its effectiveness. And it’s unclear, beyond a promise to do a better job of making sure its users are who they say they are, just how Meta’s going to do it. Remember that in 2025, Australia implemented a social media ban for kids under 16. Teens quickly found workarounds.

Far from over

Now we can get to the money. Mike made a great point about it yesterday. “Meta is on the hook for $17 billion only if other companies — namely TikTok, YouTube and Snap — also agree to make these changes.” (Right now they’ve agreed to only $12 billion.)

And of course those companies are not legally required to do that. Meta wants them to, though, for its own good. Here’s Mike:

If Meta has to reduce the amount of time it’s allowed to keep young people using its apps and TikTok, Snap and YouTube do not, that’s a significant competitive disadvantage. Wrapped in the florid language of setting “a new industry standard,” Meta wants to get every tech company — both those that exist today and any future ones that are yet to come — playing by the same set of standard rules, lest it eventually fall behind.

I asked him if he thought it would work. “It might,” he said. “Imagine being TikTok or YouTube and saying, ‘No, thanks, we don’t want to protect kids,’ as Meta puts you on blast online.” Here’s his article about the deal.

More on the Meta deal

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