When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. This proverb speaks to the battle now unfolding between governments and Big Tech. In 2023, 29 US states sued Meta for designing Facebook and Instagram to keep children hooked and collecting children's data without parental consent. Meta denied wrongdoing. But on August 26, 2026, it agreed to pay up to $18 billion and introduce new safeguards.
Facebook and Instagram will now impose a default two-hour limit for under-18s, block access between midnight and 6 am, disable push notifications during school hours, hide likes from teens by default, and face independent oversight on age verification, especially for children under 13.
This settlement is significant. Not for the billions, but for the question it forces us to confront: What responsibility does a technology company have for the children on its platforms? My concern is Kenya. Our children are also digitally connected. They are no less deserving of protection because they live in Kitengela, Kiambu or Kakamega rather than California.
Kenya has laws. Section 33 of the Data Protection Act, 2019 protects children's data and requires parental consent and age verification. But a law on paper is different from a child protected at midnight while scrolling Instagram. The question is not whether Kenyan children are online. It is whether we are doing enough to keep them safe.
For too long, our conversation has ended with one lazy conclusion: "Parents should monitor their children better." Parents, teachers and children have responsibility. But platforms have responsibility too — the one we have refused to enforce. We cannot tell a mother in Nyeri, Nairobi or Isiolo to fight algorithms designed by billion-dollar engineering teams. Last term, I confiscated three phones after midnight during dorm duty, all scrolling TikTok Live.
We cannot pretend a Kenyan child is less vulnerable to an algorithm. Today, a 14-year-old in California has by default a two-hour limit, no midnight scrolling, no school-hour notifications and a block on adult content — all liftable with parental consent. A 14-year-old in Nairobi on the same app, built by the same company with the same addictive design, gets none of that.
The dopamine loop does not check your passport. What we are witnessing is maximum protection where governments have legislated, and minimum protection where governments have only appealed for parental responsibility.
Kenya has rightly embraced digital literacy. We call ourselves Silicon Savannah and lead Africa in innovation, from M-Pesa to tablets in classrooms. That is progress. But a true Silicon Savannah must lead in protection too. Teaching a child how to use technology without teaching society how to protect the child from technology is incomplete literacy.
We have focused on access. The Meta case shows access without protection is a trap. We cannot give a child a device in Grade 8, put her on an algorithm designed to maximise attention, then blame only her parents when she cannot sleep or is exposed to adult content.
I refuse to end with the tired line that "government should act" — that is how we scatter responsibility until no one carries it. We already have institutions and laws. What we need is enforcement.
The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner must enforce the Act and tell platforms a Kenyan child's data is not for sale. The Communications Authority must enforce its 2025 Industry Guidelines for Child Online Protection and turn on the same safety switch in Kenya that Meta is now forced to turn on in California. The Department of Children Services must defend children online as fiercely as offline. The DCI Child Protection Unit must continue pursuing those who exploit that vulnerability.
Ms Mwangi is a teacher at NoonKopir Girls Senior School, Kitengela
