Facebook is rolling out new Teen Account protections across Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger, expanding a 13+ content setting that defaults teens into age appropriate feeds and limits interactions with accounts that mainly post inappropriate material, Meta said.
The company said the 13+ default hides content judged inappropriate for teens in places like Feed and Reels and restricts teens from interacting with Profiles, Pages, Groups and Events that primarily post such content.
On Messenger the 13+ setting limits a teen’s ability to view links to inappropriate Facebook content and to chat with accounts that primarily share that content, Meta added, and the stricter Limited Content setting will come to Facebook and Messenger later this year.
Meta said the settings first launched on Instagram in a handful of countries, where nine out of ten teens remained in the 13+ setting, and the company said it invited parents worldwide to rate content, drawing hundreds of thousands of parents to review more than 15 million pieces of content.
Independent Assessment Findings And Additional Safety Features
Meta asked Alice, formerly ActiveFence, to stress test the Teen Account settings, and Alice compared mature themes found on Instagram, a leading competitor, and in movies rated 13+ to benchmark outcomes, the company said.
Alice found that Instagram Teen Accounts in the default 13+ setting saw 68 percent less mature content than the competitor’s teen experience, and that the Limited Content setting produced an additional layer of protection seeing 96 percent less mature content, according to Meta.
The assessment also found that where Instagram Teen Accounts did encounter mature content it tended to be less intense than comparable content on the competitor and in 13 plus movies, and that Instagram blocked mature search terms more frequently, Meta said.
Alice verified several functionalities, including defaulting teens into 13+ settings, preventing teens from selecting More Content without parental permission, and blocking comment posting for teens in Limited Content, Meta said.
Where Alice identified gaps, Meta updated detection signals to prevent teen interaction with accounts that regularly share age inappropriate content, and it broadened policies after rare cases involved risky stunts such as car surfing, the company said.
WEBN reported additional features including private accounts by default, prompts encouraging teens to log off after 60 minutes, blocks on direct messages from adults teens do not follow, and parental supervision tools such as daily time limits and activity monitoring.
WEBN also reported critics’ concerns about fake ages and secret profiles, and said Meta plans to refine presentation of teen profiles and use age prediction technology to place more users into protected accounts, while acknowledging no system is perfect.
