Meta has agreed to strengthen age checks for users under 18 as part of an $18 billion settlement with U.S. states announced on August 26. The deal resolves claims that Meta designed Facebook and Instagram to addict children and requires measures including daily usage limits, nighttime push-notification restrictions, stronger scrutiny of users under 13, easier reporting of suspected child accounts and independent auditing. Meta will not be required to demand photo IDs or video selfies. The company has historically relied on contextual signals, such as birthday posts and school-grade celebrations, after acknowledging that children sometimes misrepresent their ages. The settlement also permits temporary use of data from identified children to train an AI model for detecting under-13 accounts. Age assurance remains constrained by COPPA (U.S. children’s online privacy law), which restricts the collection of personal data from children under 13 without parental consent. A Federal Trade Commission policy statement offers limited protection for data collected solely to determine age, while states retain enforcement authority. The arrangement follows a $942 million New Mexico judgment on August 6 that similarly required improvements within COPPA’s limits.