The European Commission ruled Friday that Meta's Facebook and Instagram breach the European Union's Digital Services Act, saying the "addictive" design of both apps failed to shield users, including minors and vulnerable adults, from features engineered to keep them scrolling.
The preliminary finding leaves Meta likely to redesign its two flagship apps for European users and exposes the company to a noncompliance fine of up to 6 percent of its worldwide annual turnover — about $12 billion measured against Meta's 2025 revenue of $200.97 billion.
What Brussels wants
The Commission singled out infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications and personalized recommendations, saying Meta "did not adequately assess the risks of its addictive design on the physical and mental wellbeing of users, including minors and vulnerable adults." Regulators want the company to disable autoplay and infinite scroll by default, enforce screen-time breaks and make its recommendation algorithm "less engagement-oriented," according to the report. The Commission also said Meta's existing screen-time tools can be dismissed too easily and that its parental controls demand too much technical work from parents.
"Protecting the physical and mental health of Europeans must be a priority for social media platforms," Henna Virkkunen, the Commission's tech policy chief, said. "The Digital Services Act provides a clear framework to hold platforms accountable for the addictive design and effects of their services."
A widening front
The finding, from an investigation opened in May 2024, is the second time this year the Commission has ruled Meta in breach of the DSA. In April, regulators said the company failed to prevent under-13s from opening accounts. A separate EU review of Meta's age-verification tools and content protections for minors remains pending.
The pressure is not confined to Europe. Four U.S. states are seeking combined penalties of up to $1.4 trillion in an August trial over whether Meta engineered its apps to be intentionally addictive, The Verge reported. Two U.S. court rulings in March had already gone against Meta — one finding that the platform's design contributed to addiction and mental-health harms in young people, the other that Meta had misled users about children's safety on its platforms.
Meta's response
Meta rejected the ruling. "We disagree with these preliminary findings," a Meta spokesperson told CNBC, saying they fail to account for steps the company has taken to protect teens. Meta pointed to its Teen Accounts, which it said "automatically protect teens and put parents in control" by allowing parents to block nighttime access and cap daily use at 15 minutes. The pushback captured in today's reporting comes only from Meta itself, in statements gathered by CNBC and The Verge; no independent industry critic or dissenting regulator weighed in on Friday's finding within the coverage available.
Meta will now file a formal defense before the Commission issues a final decision. The Commission is due to publish a separate report Monday on whether to impose a bloc-wide ban on social media for children under 16.