American teenagers will soon find their Instagram and Facebook accounts switched off between midnight and 6am, capped at two hours of daily use, and subject to mandatory age verification. European teenagers will receive none of these protections, at least for now. That disparity has driven 52 members of the European Parliament to write directly to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, accusing her institution of inertia while a US legal settlement has delivered concrete safeguards in a fraction of the time.
The American settlement
Meta agreed this week to resolve claims brought by attorneys general from 52 US states that Facebook and Instagram were deliberately designed to hook young users. The settlement, which still requires court approval, commits the company to pay up to $18 billion over ten years. The financial penalty, while enormous, is less significant than the product changes it mandates.
Under the terms, Meta must set a default two-hour daily time limit for users under 18, block access entirely between midnight and 6am, and introduce mandatory age verification. Parents can adjust the time limit but cannot remove it. The curfew is a hard wall. Meta's chief legal officer, C. J. Mahoney, described the framework as "groundbreaking" and called on TikTok and YouTube to adopt equivalent measures.
The company has not said whether any of these changes will reach European users. It has, in fact, publicly contested the European Commission's own findings against it.
Two years and counting
The Commission opened a formal investigation into Meta under the Digital Services Act in May 2024, targeting the same addictive design features cited in the US litigation: infinite scroll, autoplay, and push notifications engineered to keep children scrolling. Preliminary findings arrived on 10 July this year, accusing Meta of building products that push users into what the Commission called "autopilot mode."
If confirmed, the case could generate fines of up to six per cent of Meta's global turnover, a figure reported to exceed $12 billion. But fines are not product changes. More than two years after the investigation began, European teenagers have seen no curfews, no time limits, and no new age checks on the platforms they use every day.
The MEPs' demands
The letter to von der Leyen, led by French Renew Europe MEP Stéphanie Yon-Courtin and signed by parliamentarians spanning the political spectrum, makes its case through comparison. American children obtained real protections within months of a court filing. European rules have produced nothing after more than two years of regulatory process.
"European children are worth no less than American ones," the lawmakers wrote. They added that "the commission speaks but does not deliver."
The signatories go beyond asking for faster enforcement. They want Brussels to consider a tool the EU has never deployed: a court-ordered temporary shutdown of a platform when fines fail to change behaviour. The argument is straightforward. Financial penalties, even large ones, can be absorbed by companies with the revenue of Meta. A shutdown order, even a brief one, would hit the business model directly.
Brussels pushes back
Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier told reporters at Wednesday's midday briefing that Brussels is holding out for more than the three measures Meta agreed to in the United States. "We will not settle with one or two safeguards," he said. Dialogue with Meta continues, he confirmed, but nothing "satisfactory" has yet been offered to close the case.
There is a logic to this position. A comprehensive agreement covering a wider range of design harms could deliver more for children than the US settlement, which addresses screen time and curfews but not, for instance, algorithmic recommendation systems. The risk is that the pursuit of a perfect deal delays any deal at all.
A credibility question
The episode touches a nerve that goes beyond child safety. The DSA was sold to European citizens as the framework that would finally bring big tech to heel. The Commission gained direct enforcement powers, substantial fining authority, and the ability to mandate behavioural changes. Those powers exist on paper. Whether they produce results in practice is now being tested in real time, and the early returns are not encouraging.
When a US coalition of state attorneys general can extract binding product changes within months, and the EU's dedicated regulatory machinery cannot do the same after more than two years, the comparison invites uncomfortable questions about process, urgency, and political will.
What comes next
Von der Leyen is expected to use her State of the Union address later this month to give a first indication of EU-wide age restrictions for social media. A formal legislative proposal is due later this year. Both will be watched closely for whether they match the specificity of the American measures: hard time limits, hard curfews, hard verification requirements.
The DSA investigation into Meta will also grind toward its formal conclusion. If the Commission confirms its preliminary findings, it can order specific behavioural remedies and impose fines. The question is when, and whether those remedies will resemble what American teenagers already have, or something more ambitious that takes longer to negotiate.
People mentioned
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Stéphanie Yon-Courtin
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C. J. Mahoney
Organisations
European Commission · European Parliament · Meta
