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Meta will be forced to pay $16.68bn (£12.26bn) to settle its landmark child safety social media case in the United States

Meta has thrown down the gauntlet to its Silicon Valley rivals, publishing an open letter that directly calls on TikTok and YouTube to mirror its newly announced teenage safety measures. The Facebook and Instagram parent company argues that safeguards on a single platform are fundamentally insufficient, since young users will inevitably drift to competing apps whenever one imposes restrictions.

Meta has agreed to set a two-hour daily limit, no notifications during school hours, no access at night, and more as part of its agreement.

The company wrote: "We want to ensure teens benefit from this new industry standard, but we cannot do it alone. These protections will only be truly effective if we work with our peers — TikTok and YouTube — to put the same measures in place.

"All platforms should empower parents and support teens in these ways because we know that when teens are restricted on one app, they simply move to another. For meaningful progress to happen, we urge our peers to join us."

The letter stems from a landmark deal struck with a bipartisan coalition of 52 attorneys general spanning 29 US states, territories, and the District of Columbia. The case claimed Meta deliberately made its social media apps addictive for children.

Nighttime access to its platforms will be switched off automatically, while notifications during school hours will be blocked entirely. Teenagers who remain on the apps will receive prompts every quarter of an hour of unbroken screen time, nudging them to step away.

The letter urges both YouTube and TikTok to adopt identical standards. Both of these platforms rely on feeds that are designed via an algorithm that often decides which posts appear and in what order. It uses your prior engagement, such as likes and comments, to prioritise what it thinks you'll like more — keeping you on the page to scroll for longer.

Meta's platforms like Facebook and Instagram have used this method for over a decade. Most recently, the owners of Myspace announced their goal to revive their platform to put the control of social media back in your hands without this type of algorithm.

The UK Government expects these safeguards to extend to British teenagers too. Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden said: "We don't want a situation where young people in America have got a higher rate of protection than young people in the UK."

Yet ministers are not content to rely on Meta's goodwill alone. Mr McFadden confirmed that the Government intends to press ahead with its own social media ban for young people, set to take effect next year — a policy first announced by former Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Nighttime curfews are also part of the domestic agenda. "We've got to do something about this endless scrolling, which is so addictive for young people," Mr McFadden said, stressing the importance of ensuring children enjoy "a real childhood in the real physical world.

The UK recently tested a ban on social media for under-16s overnight earlier this summer.

However, legal experts have cautioned that translating these commitments across borders presents challenges. Dr Felipe Romero-Morena, an associate professor in law at the University of Hertfordshire, said: “This settlement represents a watershed moment in platform liability, but the real test lies in the technical and cross-border enforcement of these safeguards.

“While this settlement legally binds Meta only within the United States, global regulatory spillover is inevitable.

“Regulators across Europe and the UK are already compelling major platforms toward proactive duties of care and ‘safety by default’.”

However, Mr McFadden has said that the Online Safety Act — rolled out last year — already places the UK ahead of many international counterparts on platform regulation.