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Meta's new teen restrictions reinforce AFT's call for technology guardrails
For years, educators and parents have raised concerns about what constant access to social media, screens, and increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) means for children. Now, one of the world's largest technology companies is being forced to make significant changes.
Last week, Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion and implement sweeping new protections for teenage Facebook and Instagram users, settling lawsuits brought by dozens of states that accused the company of designing its platforms to keep children hooked and scrolling while misleading the public about potential harms. Meta denied wrongdoing, but the settlement requires changes that include:
a 2-hour daily use limit for users under 18,
blocking access between midnight and 6 a.m.,
stronger age-verification measures, and
disabling most push notifications during school hours.
Those restrictions should sound familiar to AFT members. In May, AFT President Randi Weingarten unveiled a 10-point plan for student learning in the AI era, built around a simple principle: technology can have a place in education without being allowed to replace human relationships, active learning, or basic protections for children.
The AFT plan calls for no screens in pre-K-second grade except when necessary, no student-facing AI in elementary schools, a ban on AI "social companion" chatbots through age 16, stronger privacy and safety standards, independent research into technology's effects on children, and greater educator control over how technology enters classrooms.
Meta's settlement doesn't accomplish everything AFT has called for. It doesn't eliminate personalized recommendation algorithms, for example, and child-safety advocates argue additional protections are still needed. But requiring one of the world's largest technology companies to turn off notifications during the school day, limit teenagers' screen time and take greater responsibility for identifying underage users represents a massive change in the status quo and rightfully shifts the burden of action onto tech companies.
Teachers and staff shouldn't have to compete with deliberately engaging platforms for students' attention while schools and families alone are expected to clean up the consequences of intentionally addictive media.
AFT's full 10-point plan is not a call to eliminate technology from education: it's a demand to put students and educators, rather than technology companies, in control of how technology is used. As Meta's settlement shows, the conversation is moving in the right direction, even absent significant federal or state action.
