Meta agrees to new user protections that will shape the course of the social marketplace

Meta has settled a landmark court case in the US over the negative impacts of social media on teens and adolescents. Without admitting culpability, the outcome is that they will owe an $18 billion agreed payment over 10 years, and develop and implement a host of new protective measures for younger users. One of the conditions of the full settlement payment is that competitors TikTok and YouTube also introduce similar protective measures – effectively offsetting Meta’s competitive handicap should they not do so. 

The new measures to protect younger users of the platform include daily time limits, notification muting during school hours, and nighttime blocks. Like counts will be hidden, and users will be prompted by notifications every fifteen minutes of continuous use. The biggest changes will include an option to turn off video autoplay, and the ability to choose a feed that isn’t algorithmically curated. 

The near-term noise: just how big will these changes be? 

On paper, these seem like substantial changes to Meta’s platforms – as well as its competitors, in the long run. However, there is nuance to their effects. 

The Australia bans have shown that younger users are very savvy at getting around an all-out block, with 7 in 10 teens still on the same platforms they were on before the ban went into effect.

The new protections Meta is implementing are not mandatory for users to keep. Opt outs or adjustments will be possible to most, if not, all of the changes being made, although some will require parental permission. One workaround Australian teens have found is simply posing as adults when creating accounts – something Meta is still not fully equipped to combat. Verifying legal age is difficult without requiring ID, which poses an information security risk. As a result, it is likely that teens will get around these new restrictions in a similar way. 

Nevertheless, users will likely become more accustomed to these changes and their application will become more widespread. Australia has introduced similar legislation, with a proposed bill mandating an ‘opt out’ for all users from algorithm-driven discovery feeds. This ‘softer touch’ approach may be the next stage of social regulation. 

Will this gain or lose a competitive advantage for Meta? 

In the near term, Meta will be introducing measures that actively aim to reduce the time some users spend on its platform. Its competitors have not yet introduced such measures, nor are they yet required to. Meta itself now has a vested interest in its competitors complying  – because they will win the time lost on Meta’s platforms. 

The strategic play for Meta’s competitors – namely TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat – is likely to wait, because they will win Meta’s lost user time in the interim. This period gives them time to learn from Meta’s mistakes and successes in implementing new protections. Then, once regulatory pressure finally becomes too intense, they can action changes on their own terms.

The bigger question is what will happen after protective measures like this are normalised, with the effects likely to extend across markets and demographics. When all apps have time limits and opt-outs of the algorithm, user behaviour will change. Time not spent on social media will free up time for other things. When users opt out of using the algorithms, they effectively opt out of gamified discovery – which will pose huge challenges for marketers and independent creators alike who up until now have been able to use them to their advantage. On the other hand, a disrupted market, with new user habits and the incumbents scrambling to pivot, will offer ripe opportunities for new propositions that can solve the same problems as part of their core USPs. 

We assess weekly active use across social platforms, by age, in our latest data snapshot, Social platform user data snapshot: It’s not all Gen Zalpha.