We have announced a series of updates designed to strengthen protections for teens across Instagram, Facebook and Messenger. The updates focus on helping ensure teens are enrolled in the right protections, providing parents with greater visibility into their teen’s online experiences, and expanding safeguards that support teen wellbeing.
“Keeping teens safe is one of our most important priorities, and these updates from, 13+ content settings across Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger, to AI-powered age detection and new parental alerts — reflect our commitment to building age-appropriate experiences by default.” – Natasha Jog, Director, Public Policy, Meta, India
13+ Content Settings To Instagram, Facebook and Messenger Teen Accounts Globally
Instagram’s age-appropriate 13+ content rating was introduced to India recently, and now, the settings to Teen Accounts have now been rolled out globally across Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger. Facebook’s new 13+ default setting is designed to hide content that’s inappropriate for teens in places like Feed and Reels, and to limit teens’ ability to interact with Profiles, Pages, Groups and Events that primarily post inappropriate content. The goal is that teens should see content that’s similar to what they’d see in an age-appropriate movie by default. On Messenger, the 13+ default setting limits teens’ ability to view links to inappropriate Facebook content, or to chat with accounts that primarily share inappropriate content on Facebook.
New AI-Powered Age Assurance Measures to Place Teens in Age-Appropriate Experiences
Our ongoing efforts to develop advanced AI that detects underage accounts, includes the use of visual analysis to look beyond simple admissions of age. This includes using AI technology to analyze entire profiles for contextual clues — such as birthday celebrations or mentions of school grades — to determine if an account likely belongs to someone underage. Signals across various formats are evaluated, like posts, comments, bios, and captions, and this technology will be expanded across additional parts of our apps like Instagram Reels, Instagram Live, and Facebook Groups.
Visual analysis is also being added as a new technique to aid detection efforts. This technology allows our AI to scan photos and videos for visual clues about a person’s age that text might miss. This is not facial recognition. Our AI looks at general themes and visual cues, for example height or bone structure, to estimate someone’s general age; it does not identify the specific person in the image. By combining these visual insights with our analysis of text and interactions, we can significantly increase the number of underage accounts we identify and remove.
New Alerts to Let Parents Know if Their Teen May Need Support
Instagram will be notifying parents using supervision if their teen repeatedly tries to search for terms related to suicide or self-harm within a short period of time. This is the latest protection for Teen Accounts and Instagram’s parental supervision features. It has been rolled out to supervising parents in the EU, Brazil, and India. Supervising parents and their teens will start receiving notifications today to let them know these alerts are coming.
Family Center: Manage Your Teen’s Experience in One Place
Parents of teens enrolled in supervision can now manage everything from Family Center — a one-stop shop to oversee their teen’s activity across Instagram, Meta Horizon, Facebook, and Messenger, without jumping between different apps and settings.
To set up Supervision, visit familycenter.meta.com/supervision. In the coming months, parents will also be able to get a holistic view of teen activity across our apps, such as aggregated time spent.
