Meta's $18 billion agreement with US attorneys general contained a detail that could push its consequences beyond Instagram and Facebook. Part of the amount involved was conditioned on the adoption of similar measures by TikTok and YouTube.

When announcing the agreement in August, Meta also published an open letter asking both platforms to adopt the same set of protections for teens. Among them were time limits, nighttime blocks, age verification, and new tools for parents.

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The response began to appear in the following weeks. YouTube indicated that it does not intend to join Meta's agreement and will continue to work with its own safety tools. TikTok, on the other hand, reached an agreement with the state of Alabama that includes several of the measures Meta had put on the table.

Meanwhile, Meta itself continues to expand controls within its applications. In September, Threads received parental supervision globally. At the end of the month, WhatsApp announced new tools for teen accounts.

Meta's attempt to standardize the industry

In addition to paying about $18 billion over ten years, Meta made commitments related to the use of Instagram and Facebook by teens.

Of the total amount, about $5.3 billion is conditioned on the adoption of certain measures by YouTube and TikTok, as well as equivalent payments by both platforms. For this portion to be released, the companies must implement features such as a one-hour daily limit, Night Mode, and age verification.

Meta argued that teens move across different apps and that a restriction applied on only one platform could cause users to simply spend more time on another.

YouTube prefers to go its own way

The first clear response came from YouTube. In September, during the Made on YouTube event, the platform's CEO, Neal Mohan, was asked about the possibility of YouTube entering the agreement. The response was that the company intends to remain focused on its own safety efforts.

“We have invested in ensuring the safety of young people on our platform for a long time,” Mohan told CNN. According to him, what should be expected from YouTube is the continuation of this work.

The stance is also related to how YouTube defines its own product. Mohan argued that the platform is different from Meta's services and cited the fact that a significant portion of consumption occurs on televisions.

YouTube already offers mechanisms geared toward families and teens. Among them are tools to limit time spent on Shorts and parental supervision features.

The company also claims to work with third-party experts on issues related to child and teen safety.

YouTube also faces lawsuits related to the impact of its platforms on young users. In March, YouTube and Meta were held liable in a separate trial in Los Angeles involving allegations that their platforms contributed to harm to a teenager. The companies plan to appeal the decision.

TikTok takes a different direction

On September 25, the state of Alabama announced an agreement with the platform to resolve a state lawsuit related to child and teen safety. The state will receive at least $100 million, with the possibility of reaching $300 million if certain conditions are met and other states adopt similar terms.

The agreement was scheduled to be tested in a jury trial but was settled before the hearing began.

In addition to the payment, TikTok agreed to implement a series of measures aimed at teen users in Alabama. Among them are a two-hour daily limit, interruptions after periods of use, restrictions during school hours, and access limitations overnight.

The package also includes age verification mechanisms, teen accounts set to private by default, parental controls, a non-personalized feed option, and restrictions related to certain appearance filters.

This does not mean, however, that TikTok has formally joined Meta's multi-state agreement. The commitment announced by Alabama is a separate agreement between the state and the platform.

The difference is important because state lawsuits against tech companies have produced their own negotiations. The same company can face lawsuits in different states and reach agreements with specific conditions in each jurisdiction.

In the Alabama case, TikTok did not admit liability or wrongdoing. The company stated that its priority is to maintain a safe and positive environment for users and to continue improving its safety tools.

Meta's moves

While attempting to broaden the debate to other platforms, Meta continues to add supervision mechanisms to its own services.

One of the most recent examples is Threads. On September 15, the company announced the global expansion of parental supervision on the platform. In Brazil, however, some forms of supervision were already available previously due to the requirements of the Digital ECA.

With supervision enabled, parents and guardians can track the teen's screen time, set daily limits, block access during specific times, and configure sleep mode.

It is also possible to manage some privacy settings, such as who can tag the teen in posts and certain content-related preferences.

Threads also has the Teen Accounts tool, which automatically applies protections like private profiles and restrictions on content presented to this audience. Parents or guardians can decide whether teens under 16 can make some of these settings less strict.

WhatsApp expands parental control

On September 30, Meta announced new parental controls for teens on WhatsApp.

The features are optional and allow parents or guardians to set some of the account's privacy settings. It is possible to choose who can view the teen's profile picture and who can add them to groups. If the young person wants to make these settings less strict, permission from the guardian via a PIN will be required.

There are also alert mechanisms. Guardians can receive notifications when the teen enters or leaves a group, or when a group they are part of increases significantly in size.

Other controls allow managing the use of Channels and Status, as well as choosing between the default Meta AI setting for ages 13 and up and a more restrictive alternative called “Limited content.”

An important detail is that parental control does not give guardians access to the content of chats. According to Meta, personal messages and calls remain protected by end-to-end encryption, even with supervision features enabled. In practice, parents can receive certain information and set usage rules, but cannot monitor the content of messages.

In Brazil, the expansion of these mechanisms also happens within a specific regulatory environment. The Digital ECA established new obligations for digital platforms regarding the protection of children and teenagers, including age verification mechanisms and parental supervision. Meta states that its features were expanded to meet Brazilian requirements.

What changes for parents and teens in practice?

The different agreements and tools point to a shift in how platforms handle teen accounts.

For a long time, access control depended mainly on the settings available within each app or direct intervention by guardians. Now, companies are creating more structured mechanisms to set time limits, track screen time, and restrict certain features.

Still, there is no single model. Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp, TikTok, and YouTube have different usage models. One platform is focused on short videos, another on private messages, another on feed-based social media, and another combines on-demand videos, broadcasts, and television consumption.

A time limit may be technically simple to implement, but its meaning varies according to how the service is used.

For this reason, beyond the number of hours, current mechanisms involve other variables, such as usage times, notifications, recommended content, privacy, age, filters, and the option of family supervision.

Control does not end within the application

A teenager can have restrictions on Instagram and continue using YouTube, TikTok, video games, streaming services, or web browsers. Similarly, a limit set on a mobile phone does not necessarily represent all the time that device remains connected to the internet.

It is in this space that network-level control solutions come into play.

The CodeWall, for example, acts on the home internet connection and not just on a specific application. The platform allows viewing connected devices, tracking usage time, and creating access schedules by time, duration, or intermittent periods.

In practice, this allows establishing a rule that does not depend on whether the teen is using Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, or any other service.

A routine can make certain devices lose internet access during study hours or at night. It is also possible to establish a daily connection limit for a person, summing up the usage across different devices.

Google Family Link, Apple features, and controls from Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads, TikTok, and YouTube act at different levels of devices and applications. CodeWall works on the Wi-Fi network and can cover cell phones, computers, televisions, video games, and other connected equipment.

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