Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: This Meta outcome could be more efficient than a social media ban

Author: Heather du Plessis-Allan,
Publish Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2026, 6:57pm

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Listen, if you somehow find yourself weirdly unconvinced that social media is bad for kids, just take a look at what Facebook and Instagram have done. It's huge.

Without actually admitting that kids get addicted to social media, they have effectively admitted it by promising to make changes to their platforms designed to break that addiction.

Now, this is part of that massive court case I've been updating you on for the past week or so. This is the one where 29 states have taken action against Meta, the parent company, in California. The case has only been going since last week and was set down for many weeks to come but Meta has called it to an end and settled to the tune of nearly US$18 billion, then promised these changes.

The changes are significant. Meta will upgrade its checks to stop 13 year olds from signing up and for kids aged between 13 and 17, their use will be limited. There will be a daily two-hour limit on the apps and, after that, the apps will shut down.

The apps will not open between midnight and 6am, which is basically there to stop kids using them secretly while their parents are asleep. The apps will not send notifications during school hours, so they do not distract kids, and there will be a complete ban on visible like counts and reaction numbers, along with a total ban on filters that mimic cosmetic surgery or alter facial structures.

Now, if that is not an admission that kids cannot help themselves on these things and that they affect mental health, I don't know what is. I don't know what other admission people are looking for.

The problem is Meta has only agreed to do this in the US. What now needs to happen is for these measures to be introduced in New Zealand and for every other social media provider to do the same thing here: TikTok and the whole lot of them.

If, and it is a big if, Meta does this properly, with integrity, and does not just pretend to introduce these safeguards for kids, this could actually be more effective than a social media ban in New Zealand. If Meta does this properly, it will be harder for kids to get around these restrictions than it would be to get around a ban.

There are a lot of ifs there. But if you are still not sure that social media is actually bad for kids, look at this. Meta would not settle for this amount of money and would not bring in safeguards that essentially admit guilt unless it was being forced into it by a court case that was going to do that anyway.

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