The European Union took direct aim at Meta on Friday, accusing the tech giant of violating the bloc’s social media regulations by engineering Facebook and Instagram in ways that keep users compulsively engaged — and ordering the company to shut down what it calls “key addictive features.”
The EU’s executive body, the European Commission, issued a new round of charges against Meta Platforms as part of an ongoing investigation under the Digital Services Act — a sweeping set of digital rules that requires technology companies to safeguard internet users or face steep financial penalties.
According to the commission’s preliminary findings, Meta failed to properly evaluate how its platform design affects the physical and mental well-being of users, including children. While Meta does offer tools to help people manage their time on Facebook and Instagram, regulators said those tools are too easy to bypass, too easily dismissed, or too technically complicated for most people to actually use.
The commission said Meta must make structural changes to both platforms — specifically disabling features such as autoplay video and infinite scrolling so they are not switched on by default.
Meta now has an opportunity to respond and make its case before the commission issues a final ruling. If found in violation, the company could face a fine of up to 6% of its total worldwide annual revenue.
In a statement released Friday, Meta said the preliminary findings fail to acknowledge what the company has already done to protect teenagers. “Since this investigation began, we rolled out Teen Accounts that automatically protect teens and put parents in control — allowing them to block access to Instagram at night and cap daily screen time at just 15 minutes,” the company said. “We share the European Commission’s commitment to providing teens with safe, positive online experiences and will continue to engage constructively with them.”
Henna Virkkunen, an executive vice-president at the commission who oversees technology policy, said Europe remains firmly committed to holding platforms accountable for addictive design. “Protecting the physical and mental health of Europeans must be a priority for social media platforms,” Virkkunen said in a written statement.
Regulators described how features such as personalized content recommendations and constant push notifications create a never-ending flow of material that puts users’ brains on “autopilot,” driving compulsive scrolling and viewing habits.
The commission also noted that parental screen time controls can be “easily dismissed” and do not lead to any meaningful reduction in how much time teens spend on the platforms. Regulators added that the controls demand a level of technical knowledge, time, and effort that puts them out of reach for many parents.
Among the additional changes the commission is pushing for: better prompts encouraging users to take breaks from screens, and an overhaul of the content recommendation system to make it less focused on maximizing user engagement.
Friday’s charges are the latest development in an investigation that Brussels launched in 2024 amid concerns that Meta was not doing enough to protect children online. Earlier this year, the EU announced that its probe found Meta was failing to prevent children under 13 — the minimum age required to use Facebook and Instagram — from creating accounts, and was not doing enough to find and remove underage users who had already signed up.
