The Worth of Our Eyeballs: Meta, Social Media and the Price of Our Children’s Attention

The Worth Of Our Eyeballs

Meta, the social media giant, is worth $1.4 trillion. And today after years of whistleblowers, investigations and lawsuits over the mounting evidence about what social media is doing to children, a bipartisan coalition of 51 attorneys general has reached a landmark settlement with Meta.

The company could pay up to $17.1 billion in fines.

But what will we do with the money if it doesn’t result in meaningful changes to the algorithms that we and our children have become hooked on?

Here are some of the new rules that Meta and other social media companies must implement.

For teenagers, we are finally talking about some very basic things:

A ban on cosmetic-procedure filters

The very filters that make teenagers look thinner, smoother, prettier and increasingly unlike themselves.

Hidden “like” counts

Because apparently, we needed a lawsuit to establish that measuring your social worth through little red numbers might not be fantastic for a developing brain.

A midnight-to-6 a.m. lockout

Teen accounts will be blocked overnight by default, unless a parent lifts the restriction.

A two-hour daily limit

A default two-hour limit across Meta’s apps. But will it be enough of a deterrent to keep teenagers off the internet in general?

No notifications during school hours

Push notifications will be muted from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on school days.

And there will also be an option for a chronological, non-algorithmic feed. 

All of this sounds great on paper. But when will these changes actually be put into place? And why did it take years of legal wrangling to get here?

META: The Multifold Problem

I wrote earlier this year about the social media lawsuits against Meta and YouTube and the disturbing evidence emerging from them.

The uncomfortable truth is that this wasn’t some accidental side effect of technology.

The business model was built around attention, engagement, growth and keeping people on the platform.

And children are particularly vulnerable customers. 

Meta’s own history around cosmetic-surgery filters is revealing. The company had previously restricted them after outside experts raised concerns about their impact on young people. Internal warnings reportedly recognized the risks. Yet the restrictions were eventually lifted because engagement and competitive pressures won.

We keep talking about screen time as though the problem is simply that children are spending too many hours on a single app.

A two-hour limit on Meta does not stop a teenager from spending another three hours on TikTok or YouTube.

And this is where we need to ask ourselves — and the MANGOS companies — about the kind of digital ecosystem we are creating for our children.

Because this is no longer just about social media.

It includes algorithms, gaming platforms, recommendation engines, AI companions and chatbots.

The technology keeps changing. The business model remains hasn’t changed from “Capture attention. Keep it. Monetize it.”

So perhaps the bigger question isn’t how many hours our children are spending online.

It is,

Who is responsible for protecting a developing human being from a system designed to capture their attention and keep it for hours on end?

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Truth About Technology – A Digital Literacy Project