Meta will restrict how children can use Instagram and Facebook during school hours and at night as part of an $18bn (£13.2bn) settlement over claims it deliberately made its apps addictive for teenagers.

The social media giant agreed with 52 US states and territories on Wednesday to end a lawsuit claiming that it had harmed children for years while concealing the truth about the risks of social media.

In the UK, the Government said on Wednesday evening that it was monitoring events closely as it moves ahead with a ban on under-16s using social media – raising the prospect that it could demand Meta makes similar changes in Britain.

The settlement, which follows a lawsuit dubbed social media's "big tobacco" moment, means teenagers in most of the US will not be able to access Facebook and Instagram between midnight and 6am, and notifications will be silenced between 8am and 3pm.

They will also be subject to a two-hour daily limit, receive regular alerts warning against over-use, and face stricter age-checks.

Teenagers will not be able to see how many likes are on their posts, or other people's posts, while the apps will ban "extreme makeup" filters for teenagers.

William Tong, Connecticut's attorney general, one of the prosecutors who had pursued Meta, said: "Meta strip-mined the souls of America's children for maximum profit with abusive and addictive features that unleashed a youth mental health catastrophe. That ends now."

Lawyers for the states had told the court that Meta's business model was to "hook the users" and then "hide the truth" about the damage caused by its apps.

Meta, which denied wrongdoing as part of the deal, has agreed to pay $18bn in total to the states, which had been seeking $200bn in damages.

It is made up of $16.7bn in payments to the states, a further payment related to the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, and a separate $1bn fine paid to Texas.