Meta has just agreed to give American teenagers a night curfew and a two-hour daily limit. It is part of an $18bn settlement with US states. European teenagers are still waiting, despite the EU’s tougher online rules. More than fifty lawmakers want the Commission to explain why.
That contrast did not go unnoticed in the European Parliament. Fifty-two of its members from across the political spectrum wrote to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen this week. They accuse her of moving too slowly. Meta’s American users, they point out, already have concrete protections in hand.
French lawmaker Stéphanie Yon-Courtin (Renew/FRA) leads the group. They want Brussels to consider a tool it has never used. A court could order a temporary shutdown of a platform once fines fail to change its behaviour.
What US teenagers get now
The trigger for their anger came this week. Meta agreed to a settlement, still pending court approval, that resolves claims brought by attorneys general from 52 states, in a case originally filed by 29. The claims allege that Facebook and Instagram were deliberately engineered to hook young users.
Meta will pay up to $18bn over 10 years. It will also roll out concrete changes for teenagers: a two-hour default daily time limit, a night curfew blocking access between midnight and six a.m., and mandatory age checks.
You might be interested
Meta’s chief legal officer, C. J. Mahoney, called the deal a “groundbreaking” framework. He urged TikTok and YouTube to match it.
None of these fixes are coming to European teenagers, at least not yet. Meta has made no public comment on whether it will do the same in Europe. The company has, in fact, openly disputed the EU’s own findings against it.
Brussels’ case, over two years old
The European Commission opened its own investigation into Meta back in May 2024. It falls under the Digital Services Act (DSA) and targets exactly the design features named in the US case too: infinite scroll, autoplay, and push notifications built to keep children hooked.
Preliminary findings came on 10 July. They accused Meta of building addictive-by-design products that shift users into what the Commission called “autopilot mode.” If confirmed, Brussels could fine Meta up to six per cent of its global turnover. Reports have put that penalty above $12bn.
Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier insisted this week that Brussels wants more than symbolic gestures. “We will not settle with one or two safeguards,” he told reporters at Wednesday’s midday briefing. Dialogue with Meta continues, he said, but nothing “satisfactory” is yet on the table to close the case. Separately, von der Leyen is expected to give a first indication of EU-wide age restrictions for social media at her State of the Union address later this month. The formal legislative proposal itself, though, is due only later this year.
Fifty-two voices demand action
The letter is blunt about the timing. American children, it argues, got real protection within months of a court case. European rules have delivered nothing in more than two years.
The commission speaks but does not deliver.
— Stéphanie Yon-Courtin, Member of the European Parliament (Renew/FRA)
“European children are worth no less than American ones,” the lawmakers wrote. They added pointedly that “the commission speaks but does not deliver.” Fines, they argue, can be “written off” by tech giants. A court-ordered shutdown, by contrast, “reaches the business model itself”.
Whether Brussels reaches for that option remains to be seen. For now, the contrast stands. American teenagers get their curfew from a court case in California. Europe still waits on a Commission that promised, over two years ago, to act.
