As I spent time read­ing up on Meta’s set­tle­ment of the US’s teen/child harm case, so many ad­verse is­sues from so­cial me­dia us­age came to mind. Some I have ad­dressed over the years, and many have prompt­ed my own re­duced use of these so­cial me­dia plat­forms.

First and most no­table, in this Au­gust 2026 US$18 bil­lion set­tle­ment, Meta, par­ent com­pa­ny of Face­book, In­sta­gram and What­sApp, has agreed to the mul­ti­state set­tle­ment with­out ad­mit­ting any wrong­do­ing on its part. In fact, Meta up­holds that it has in­vest­ed sub­stan­tial­ly in in­clud­ing safe­ty fea­tures and say that the claims made by the US states are “un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed” (edi­tion.cnn.com).

The states law­suit ac­cused Meta of in­ten­tion­al­ly pro­duc­ing “dan­ger­ous prod­ucts” which cause ad­dic­tion and harmed chil­dren’s men­tal health. In his open­ing state­ment, a lawyer for the group of at­tor­neys gen­er­al that rep­re­sent­ed the states said that Meta’s busi­ness mod­el re­lies on “hook­ing young peo­ple and ex­ploit­ing their da­ta and at­ten­tion.”

Meta is ac­cused of us­ings mech­a­nisms such as an in­fi­nite scrolling feed, al­go­rith­mic rec­om­men­da­tions and fre­quent no­ti­fi­ca­tions as part of the de­vice that keeps peo­ple spend­ing in­or­di­nate amount of time on the plat­forms.

Ear­li­er in Au­gust, in an­oth­er case, a New Mex­i­co judge deemed Meta a “pub­lic nui­sance” say­ing its ef­fect was like that of air pol­lu­tion, in or­der­ing Meta to pay just un­der US$1 bil­lion for its fail­ure to warn the pub­lic about dan­gers its plat­forms posed to chil­dren (bbc.com).

Many who re­spond­ed to the for­mer judge­ment point­ed out that the re­al dan­gers for teens/young adults may not be on these Meta plat­forms sug­gest­ing that Tik Tok and Snapchat pose greater threats since they were more wide­ly used by that age group.

Meta’s call for Tik­Tok and YouTube and the states at­tor­neys gen­er­al to fol­low suit with im­ple­ment­ing changes on us­age on their plat­forms bears out this sug­ges­tion. Meta said in their set­tle­ment re­lease that “teens move flu­id­ly be­tween dozens of apps a day.”

“All plat­forms should em­pow­er par­ents and sup­port teens by putting the same mea­sures in place, be­cause we know that when teens are re­strict­ed on one app, they sim­ply move to an­oth­er,” Meta wrote. They urged adopt­ing sim­i­lar stan­dards to “en­sure teens use so­cial me­dia in a healthy and re­spon­si­ble way” (about.fb.com/news).

As part of the deal, Meta has agreed to make changes to its plat­forms, such as es­tab­lish­ing dai­ly time lim­its for teen users, a de­fault block or night mode be­tween mid­night and 6am and many oth­er use­ful “re­stric­tions” to help man­age the men­tal health fall­out from use, mis­use, overuse and abuse (See Meta agree­ment link be­low).

While these changes are in the US, Meta would do well to con­sid­er a glob­al over­haul to en­sure that teens every­where re­ceive a sim­i­lar lev­el of pro­tec­tion. That is my pipe dream for 2026 and be­yond.

While many or all the ini­tia­tives in this set­tle­ment are wel­comed, I must agree with the com­menters who say that par­ent­ing should be the first bar­ri­er to the in­tru­sion of these apps in­to the men­tal space of our chil­dren.

But par­ent­ing by phone and so­cial me­dia is such a thing in to­day’s world, I do not know where to start or even if I should start.

As I write, I re­mem­ber a younger friend ask­ing me to cre­ate a mo­bile hotspot at a sports day. I un­hesi­tat­ing­ly al­lowed her the hookup. It would take a while be­fore I re­alised that her un­der-five had been on a de­vice for over an hour – in a sports and fam­i­ly day.

I switched off the da­ta. It was on­ly at that time that the par­ent got up and took the child to the boun­cy cas­tle, face paint­ing, and sundry oth­er play and plea­sure ac­tiv­i­ties that were be­ing of­fered for chil­dren.

It is a sim­ple ex­am­ple, but I can­not tell you the depth of grief I suf­fered. And I am now giv­en to suf­fer­ing silent­ly be­cause I no longer have the ca­pac­i­ty for the ire of par­ents who think I am in­trud­ing on their par­ent­ing, or that I “do not un­der­stand they are tired,” or that “this is the on­ly way to keep the child qui­et.”

I am an ad­vo­cate for parental con­trol first. I al­so un­der­stand the con­ve­nience of which par­ents speak, but I am more con­cerned that many of the par­ents around me are not ed­u­cat­ing them­selves suf­fi­cient­ly about the dan­gers of the use, overuse, mis­use and abuse of de­vices and apps.

There are so many oth­er av­enues and cre­ative ex­po­sures that make bet­ter con­tri­bu­tions to our chil­dren’s de­vel­op­ment, but par­ents will say to me that I do not ap­pre­ci­ate their lim­i­ta­tions, and they may well be right too.

Know this: I ful­ly ap­pre­ci­ate all the good things that so­cial me­dia and these plat­forms may of­fer.

What I fear is the epi­dem­ic of men­tal health is­sues that so­cial me­dia use, mis­use, overuse and abuse can have and will in­flict on us. And I am grow­ing old­er in that world that will be gov­erned by those grow­ing up, be­ing ed­u­cat­ed (and some even adopt­ing for­eign ac­cents) on this be­he­moth.

Read Meta agree­ment here: https://about.fb.com/news/2026/08/agree­ment-with-state-at­tor­neys-gen­er­al-sup­port­ing-teens/