First Thing: Meta agrees to make sweeping changes to apps for teens | Martin Belam

Meta was sued over allegations that it deliberately designed addictive products that hooked young people. Photograph: Ian Allenden/Alamy View image in fullscreen Meta was sued over allegations that it deliberately designed addictive products that hooked young people. Photograph: Ian Allenden/Alamy First Thing: Meta agrees to make sweeping changes to apps for teens Safety features including usage limits and night-time blocks to be set by default. Plus changes to famous French cheeses Good morning. Meta has agreed to significant changes to its Instagram and Facebook apps in a settlement that ended a landmark lawsuit. The agreement curtails a major trial in California and will require the social media company to pay up to $18bn. Meta agreed to establish safeguards for teenage users, including daily usage limits and blocks on night-time use nationwide in the US. California and 28 other US states sued the $1.36tn (£1tn) company over allegations that Meta deliberately designed addictive products that hooked young people, leading to mental health issues, including anxiety, depression and suicide. As part of the settlement, the company denies wrongdoing. What will be changing in the apps? The biggest alteration is that Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, is now required to make many of its safety limitations the default setting for accounts created by teens, a pivot from its previous opt-in approach to child safety. Nick Robins-Early and Johana Bhuiyan explain more in this piece: six key takeaways from the end of the Meta trial. Will other companies be affected? Meta is putting the agreement forward as a precedent for other social media companies to follow. The company’s chief legal officer, CJ Mahoney, said: “Because teens move fluidly across dozens of apps, we need an industry-wide solution. We therefore call on our industry peers … to implement this new framework.” Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap face thousands more similar US lawsuits brought by families, individuals, school districts and other attorneys general. Are campaigners satisfied with the result? Arturo Béjar, an ex-Facebook employee and whistleblower, said the outcome “is not an all-clear to say the product is safe. The limitations that are in the agreement are the equivalent of saying: ‘Well, you can smoke as many cigarettes as you can in two hours a day’. It doesn’t make the cigarettes any safer.” Nearly 1,400 missing, mostly tourists, after Nepal-Tibet flash flood kills at least 165 View image in fullscreen Houses lying deluged in sludge after flash floods in Nepal’s Nuwakot district. Photograph: Prabin Ranabhat/AFP/Getty Images Nearly 1,400 people are missing, the majority of them tourists, authorities have said, after a catastrophic flash flood hit Nepal and Tibet, roaring down valleys and wiping out entire villages, with the preliminary death toll standing at 165. Almost 600 foreigners were among 826 people missing in Nepal, police and tourism ⁠officials said, with 63 of those from the US. Videos from the event on Wednesday showed a massive wall of water crashing down on the border as people attempted to flee. Trucks were upended and houses, roads ⁠and power projects swept away in Nepal, while ​officials in Tibet said they feared “major casualties” after a mudslide hit a border crossing. How did it happen? As this visual guide explains, at 8.37am on Wednesday an enormous section ⁠of a glacier in the Himalayas sheared free and crashed on to the valley floor in Nepal’s Langtang national park, about 60km north of the capital Kathmandu, near the mountainous Nepal-Tibet border. Trump downplays Moscow visit by CIA director as ‘semi-routine’ View image in fullscreen President Donald Trump and CIA director John Ratcliffe. Photograph: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images Donald Trump has downplayed a visit to Moscow by the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, as “semi-routine” after he turned up in the Russian capital unannounced. The White House, CIA, Pentagon and the US air force all declined to comment on the visit, which was confirmed on Wednesday by a Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov. Interviewed by the conservative radio host Glenn Beck, Trump said “He’s there, you know, very sort of semi-routine. I hate to disappoint people. We would like to see the war with Ukraine end. We’re working very hard to get that war ended, and frankly, they both want to see it ended at this point.” Texas law banning drag shows where children may be present struck down again View image in fullscreen Advocacy groups sued the state after the bill’s passage, arguing a ban on ‘sexually oriented performance’ infringed constitutional rights. Photograph: Houston Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers/Getty Images A federal judge has, for a second time, struck down a Texas state law banning drag performances in settings where children may be present. US district judge David Hittner said Texas cannot enforce its drag show ban. He said that the measure improperly restricts speech and violates the first amendment of the US constitution. Texas’s move was just one across several states in 2023, driven by a rightwing backlash to increasing queer and transgender rights and equality. Advocacy groups sued the state after the bill’s passage, arguing a ban on “sexually oriented performance” infringed constitutional rights. In other news … View image in fullscreen Busy Philipps. Photograph: John Nacion/Variety/Getty Images Busy Philipps has revealed she had a brain tumour removed, which was diagnosed shortly after her Dawson’s Creek co-star James Van Der Beek died from bowel cancer. A trial date has been set for four men for their alleged involvement in the 9/11 attack, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is accused as the mastermind of the plot. A California man who was arrested this week for having a wooden guillotine near the US Capitol grounds pleaded not guilty at an arraignment to a misdemeanor weapon charge. A fake US thinktank set up and funded by Israel sought to game AI for propaganda, attempting to prime chatbots to make pro-Israel arguments. Stat of the day: Nvidia CEO declares ‘golden age’ as quarterly revenue doubles to nearly $100bn View image in fullscreen Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Photograph: Manami Yamada/Reuters The $5tn firm beat Wall Street expectations for yet another blockbuster quarter, though the stock made only modest gains. Jensen Huang, the founder and CEO, jubilantly declared that demand is accelerating as the AI industry had reached a “golden age”. The Filter Recommends: The best women’s running shoes in the US for roads and trails View image in fullscreen Fifteen pairs of running shoes are put to the test. Photograph: RyanJLane/Getty Images Over five months, Paige Triola evaluated 15 different pairs of shoes from On, Nike, Adidas, Hoka and more to find out which belong on your next road or trail run. Don’t miss this: Shirley Manson, Chappell Roan and Eli on playing Olivia Rodrigo’s female-only festival View image in fullscreen Shirley Manson of Garbage. Photograph: Shirlaine Forrest/WireImage “Here we are in 2026, as women’s rights are regressing all over the world. We’re at a crisis point,” said Shirley Manson of Garbage, as she and her band prepared to play the Olivia Rodrigo-curated Daisy Chain Fields. The event belongs to a lineage of female-led music festivals that have tried to raise money for female-focused causes while correcting a stubborn gender imbalance across festival lineups. … or this: Meet the man calling out NYC’s infernally hot subway stations View image in fullscreen Jack Klein on the NYC subway. Photograph: Thalia Juarez/The Guardian Jack Klein takes heat readings, gives fans to overheated passengers and lugs big jugs of water into the overheated stations of New York’s subway. Climate check: 1.3m plastic bottles collected in a day in global volunteer ocean cleanup View image in fullscreen A crab on a water bottle. Photograph: see description More than 1.3m plastic bottles were collected from beaches, rivers and waterways last year during the world’s largest single-day volunteer ocean cleanup. About 630,000 people took part in the International Coastal Cleanup in 2025, removing almost 13.9m pieces of rubbish. Last Thing: France to relax cheese production rules after drought takes toll on grazing land View image in fullscreen A comté refinement cellar. Photograph: Didier ZYLBERYNG/Alamy Strict production rules will be loosened for some of France’s most famous cheeses after drought and repeated heatwaves dried out grazing pastures. Comté, beaufort and abondance makers can temporarily supplement cows’ diets as there is “no grass left to eat”. If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email newsletters@theguardian.com Explore more on these topics US news First Thing newsletter news Share Reuse this content