An Opinion on Meta, Children, Digital Freedom and Whether Social Media Should Ever Sleep
For years, the debate over social media has largely focused on children.
Are children spending too much time on Instagram? Is Facebook exposing young people to inappropriate content? Should teenagers be allowed to scroll through TikTok throughout the night? Are technology companies doing enough to protect minors?
Those are important questions. Recent actions against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, along with new restrictions being adopted or considered in countries such as Australia and Norway, demonstrate that governments are becoming increasingly willing to intervene.
But perhaps we are asking too narrow a question.
Instead of only asking how much social media is too much for children, perhaps society should begin asking how much is too much for everyone.
And that leads to an uncomfortable idea: Should social media be available 24 hours a day?
Perhaps it shouldn’t.
The Meta Case Raises a Bigger Question
The recent New Mexico case against Meta is significant because it moves beyond the traditional argument that parents alone are responsible for controlling children’s internet use.
The court’s decision places substantial responsibility on Meta and requires stronger protections for minors, including measures addressing age verification, notifications and other aspects of how young people interact with Meta’s platforms.
Meta has opposed aspects of the case and is expected to continue challenging the decision. That matters because courts must carefully balance legitimate concerns about public welfare with constitutional protections, technological realities and the rights of companies and individuals.
But regardless of what ultimately happens on appeal, the case raises a question that will not disappear:
How much responsibility should social-media companies have for the way people use their products?
That question shouldn’t automatically end when someone turns 18.
Australia Has Already Crossed a Major Line
Australia has gone considerably further.
Beginning in December 2025, Australia required certain social-media platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent children under 16 from maintaining accounts.
Facebook and Instagram are among the platforms affected.
Norway has also been moving toward stronger age restrictions, while governments elsewhere are examining different approaches to protecting children online.
These policies remain controversial.
Supporters argue that governments have a responsibility to protect children from products and environments they may not be developmentally prepared to navigate.
Critics raise legitimate concerns about privacy, age verification, government overreach and whether governments should decide when people can access communications platforms.
Those objections deserve serious consideration.
But there is another side of this discussion that receives much less attention.
Adults Are Not Immune to Social Media
We sometimes discuss social-media addiction as though adults suddenly become immune when they turn 18.
They don’t.
Adults can spend hours scrolling through Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and other platforms.
A person can tell themselves, “I’ll check Facebook for five minutes,” and discover an hour later that they are still scrolling.
Social media also doesn’t stop when the workday ends.
The notifications continue.
The videos continue.
The arguments continue.
The breaking news continues.
The endless scroll continues.
And importantly, the platforms are designed so there is rarely a natural stopping point.
Television programs end. Stores close. Schools dismiss students. Offices shut down for the evening.
Social media never closes.
Perhaps it is worth asking whether that is healthy.
What If Social Media Had Closing Hours?
Consider a controversial proposal.
What if major social-media platforms became inaccessible to ordinary users for several hours overnight—for example, from midnight until 5:00 a.m.?
Not only for children.
For everyone.
At midnight, Facebook closes.
Instagram closes.
TikTok closes.
The endless scrolling stops.
Then, early the next morning, the platforms reopen.
There would obviously need to be carefully considered exceptions. Emergency communications, public-safety agencies, essential government communications, certain business operations and other legitimate services might require continuous access.
And messaging services deserve separate consideration because people increasingly rely on them as basic communications infrastructure.
But the broader principle deserves discussion.
Does society really need recreational social-media feeds operating every minute of every day?
There Are Serious Arguments Against This Idea
Any proposal restricting adults’ access to social media must confront a powerful objection:
Adults should be allowed to decide for themselves.
That argument cannot simply be dismissed.
People work different schedules. A nurse finishing a night shift may be awake at 2:00 a.m. A worker in Philadelphia may communicate with relatives in Liberia, Ghana or Nigeria when it is already morning there.
Journalists monitor international developments around the clock.
Small businesses may serve customers across multiple time zones.
And adults generally have the right to decide how they spend their free time—even when others consider their choices unhealthy.
There are also difficult questions about enforcement.
Would governments order platforms to shut down?
Would access depend on the user’s time zone?
Would VPNs make restrictions ineffective?
Would governments eventually expand a five-hour restriction into something much broader?
Those concerns are legitimate.
Government should be extremely cautious about creating the power to determine when adults can communicate with one another or access information.
But Freedom Doesn’t Mean We Cannot Regulate Technology
At the same time, modern societies already place reasonable restrictions on products and activities when unrestricted access creates broader concerns.
The fundamental question is not whether social media is “good” or “bad.”
It is whether platforms deliberately designed to maximize engagement should have absolutely unrestricted access to people’s attention 24 hours a day.
There may be alternatives to an outright overnight shutdown.
Governments could require platforms to provide an optional digital curfew that users can activate.
Parents could establish mandatory overnight restrictions for minors.
Platforms could disable nonessential push notifications during designated sleeping hours unless users specifically opt back in.
Operating systems could make nighttime social-media limits easier to establish.
Governments could also require much greater transparency about how recommendation systems encourage prolonged engagement.
These approaches would preserve considerably more individual choice than a government-mandated shutdown.
Start With Children, But Don’t End the Conversation There
Children deserve stronger protection because they are still developing emotionally, socially and psychologically.
There is therefore a strong argument for treating children differently from adults.
But protecting children should not prevent us from examining our own behavior.
Parents cannot convincingly tell teenagers to put their phones down while adults sit beside them endlessly scrolling.
We have created a culture in which millions of people wake up and immediately check their phones, carry them throughout the day and often make social media one of the last things they see before sleeping.
That deserves examination.
Maybe the Internet Doesn’t Need to Sleep—but Social Media Could
A nationwide midnight shutdown of Facebook, Instagram and other platforms would be an extraordinary government intervention. It could create significant legal, constitutional, technological and practical problems, particularly in countries such as the United States.
Therefore, it should not be presented as an easy solution.
But neither should the idea of limiting social media automatically be dismissed simply because the users are adults.
Perhaps the eventual answer isn’t government shutting Facebook down at midnight.
Maybe the answer is stronger default nighttime restrictions, mandatory protections for children, voluntary adult digital curfews, limits on overnight notifications, better parental controls and greater accountability for engagement-driven platform designs.
The important thing is that society starts having the conversation.
For nearly two decades, technology companies have asked us to accept one basic assumption:
Social media should always be available.
Twenty-four hours a day.
Seven days a week.
Three hundred sixty-five days a year.
Maybe it is time to challenge that assumption.
Australia is asking how young is too young for social media. Courts in the United States are asking how responsible technology companies should be for harms associated with their platforms.
The next question may be even bigger:
Not simply who should be allowed on social media—but when should all of us be willing to turn it off?
Sometimes protecting freedom means preserving people’s choices.
Sometimes protecting society means establishing reasonable boundaries.
Finding the line between those two principles may become one of the defining technology debates of the coming decade.