No more doomscrolling till dawn: Meta sets curfews for teen Instagram use

NEW: Instagram and Facebook will lock teen accounts at midnight and cap scrolling at two hours a day, part of an $18 billion settlement with 48 US states.

Meta is putting teenagers to bed at midnight. Instagram and Facebook will lock teen accounts overnight and cap their scrolling at two hours a day.

And no, this isn't a wellness feature Meta dreamed up out of kindness. It's part of an eighteen billion dollar settlement with 48 US states, who spent years arguing the company knowingly hooked kids on the feed. This is the campus on Hacker Way where that feed was built, and where lawyers just handed it a curfew.

Think about what's actually happening here. Mark Zuckerberg's engineers spent a decade perfecting the infinite scroll, making the app impossible to put down. Now the law says the app has to put itself down. Two hours, lights out at midnight, like a strict parent with a very expensive lawyer.

Eighteen billion dollars to admit the product worked exactly as designed. That's the part I can't stop thinking about.

This is Sara White, reporting for HIT.