Why Meta’s Settlement Does More For Kids Than Australia’s Ban

Meta has agreed to $17 billion worth of penalties to settle a court case brought against it by individual US states over its addictive technologies and the dangers they pose to children.

In simple terms, the states claimed that Meta was exploiting kids for profit, wasn’t being truthful about how it operated with its younger users, and most importantly, was not prioritising the safety of those users on its platforms.

This is a landmark decision. It changes everything for kids online, and particularly on Facebook and Instagram.

But before we unpack how it affects Australia, whether it should happen here, or whether Australia’s social media ban already does what this settlement sets out to do, let’s be clear on one thing.

That $17 billion in penalties is spread over 10 years, and Meta’s profits for a single quarter are quite often $20 billion. For context, their fine is less than their quarterly profit – yet it’s spread over 10 years. It’s nothing. Mark Zuckerberg has this money in his jacket pocket, or in his ashtray.

Leaving that aside, the other thing you should know is that Meta only has to pay 70 per cent of that fine if it’s the only platform that has to institute changes under this settlement. If TikTok and YouTube also agree to similar actions, the full 100 per cent goes to the states.

That’s an important detail. The money is going into the individual states to fund mental health and child safety programs, so that’s excellent.

So what are the changes? This is where I see a fundamental difference between how Australia is handling kids on social media and how this judgment affects them.

Under the settlement, Meta has to do a raft of things across both Facebook and Instagram to help protect kids. They include:

• A default two-hour daily time limit for kids across Instagram and Facebook combined, which can only be turned off with a parent’s permission.
• Likes will be hidden on teen profiles and on those they interact with, so kids aren’t chasing likes when it comes to content.
• School mode will mute notifications between 8am and 3pm on school days.
• Prompts when a teen uses the platforms for 15 minutes continuously, then notifications when they hit 60 minutes and 90 minutes.
• Critically, given the power of the algorithm, kids will be given the ability to choose a feed that is not driven by an algorithm.
• Kids will be able to turn off autoplay for videos and content.
• Those makeup filters that make people look completely different to how they look in real life will no longer be accessible to kids.

These are legitimately meaningful changes. These are things that will positively impact how kids interact with social media. Just imagine they were implemented across YouTube and TikTok as well as Facebook and Instagram. That could be a game changer.

That, of course, is a completely different approach to the one Australia has adopted with a social media ban for young kids, where they can’t access the platforms until they’re 16.

As wonderful as that sounds, it’s been proven beyond doubt that it’s impossible to implement. Kids are impossible to identify at that young age. Face verification and age verification do not work.

What works is parental controls. What this judgment in the US has forced is parental controls to be the default on kids’ accounts, and only when a parent truly engages with their kid’s account will they be able to change any of these limits.

Let’s be clear: these limits, these options, these changes pretty much all already exist on these platforms. They’re just not turned on by default. Now they will be.

“Let parents be parents” is the perfect way to look at this. Kids can use these platforms, but they’ll be very limited in how they use them. If parents want to engage with their kids and talk about wanting more or different access, they can do that through the parental controls that already exist.

The real question is whether Meta will implement these changes globally.

This ruling across various states of the United States obviously means they’ll implement these changes across the entire United States of America. But if Meta doesn’t implement them globally, that’s a clear demonstration that they don’t care about kids.

If Meta wants to show it cares about kids’ safety and how its platforms are used by the younger generation, it should instantly announce it’s going to implement these changes globally, with a focus on child safety and no need for lawsuits and settlements around the globe.

Frankly, that’s the only way they can avoid our eSafety Commissioner and others taking them to court for this same style of settlement. They’ve proven they’ll write a cheque to avoid the full legal process, a cheque that will have no impact on their business.

Australia should theoretically ask for the same cheque to be written here. But at the same time, what we really need is not money. We need these changes for kids.

Critically, implementing these changes across all platforms is a great approach. It exists already, and it just needs to be shifted from opt-in to opt-out so kids are kept safe by default.

This ruling in the US is driven by politics. The states politically moving against the platforms in court have pushed them to this settlement. Australia, instead, came up with its own set of rules, which seem wonderful. They seem lovely, but they do nothing.

Australia should analyse this judgment and insist that these same changes are implemented right here for our kids, whether they’re allowed on social media or not.