Social media giant Meta introduces fresh teen safety measures, eliminates over half a million accounts with sexual content involving minors
In a bid to address growing concerns over the impact of social media on youth well-being and to curb predatory behaviour, Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, has unveiled a series of new safety features designed to protect teen users and children on its platforms.
The latest safety approach focuses on enhancing privacy, restricting predator messaging, improving content filtering, simplifying reporting and blocking, and actively removing harmful accounts.
One of the key updates includes providing teen users with access to additional context about who is messaging them, enabling them to make more informed decisions about their interactions. Teens now have easier tools to instantly block and report accounts that make them uncomfortable, leading to over a million accounts being blocked and a million reports after a safety notice encouraging caution in private messages.
Meta is also testing the use of artificial intelligence to detect if users lie about being under 13. Accounts suspected of misrepresenting age are converted to teen accounts with more privacy—such as being private by default and receiving DMs only from people they follow or are connected with.
Private messages on teen accounts have been restricted so teens can only receive them from people they follow or are already connected to. This is part of Meta's efforts to protect children from predatory adults and scammers who ask for nude images, then extort them.
Enhanced nudity filters and comment filtering have been introduced to reduce exposure to nudity and sexualized comments, especially on adult-run Instagram accounts featuring children under 13. New protections have been put in place for child-focused accounts run by adults, with the strictest message settings to prevent unwanted messages, automatic activation of Hidden Words (a filter for unwanted comments), and reduced visibility to suspicious or blocked accounts to limit predator reach.
Meta has taken aggressive action against predator accounts, removing over 135,000 Instagram accounts that left sexualized comments or requested sexual images from adult-managed child accounts, with an additional 500,000 related accounts removed across Facebook and Instagram.
The new safety features are available for users of Instagram, which is owned by Meta. These measures are part of Meta's ongoing efforts to ensure a safer environment for its users, particularly minors. In 2024, Meta made teen accounts on Instagram private by default, and the new features include access to information about accounts that message teen users and an option to block and report accounts with one tap.
Meta reported that teen users blocked over a million accounts and reported another million after seeing a safety notice reminding them to be cautious in private messages and to block and report anything uncomfortable. The safety features are a significant step towards addressing the concerns raised by critics and regulatory bodies, and Meta continues to work towards creating a safer online space for its young users.
- Meta's newly announced safety features for its platforms aim to improve mental health and overall well-being of youth by implementing technology such as AI to detect and prevent predatory behavior and inappropriate content, including nudity and sexualized comments.
- To further promote health-and-wellness, Meta is providing teen users with additional context about their messaging encounters, offering them easier tools to block and report uncomfortable accounts, thus encouraging responsible use of social media platforms like Instagram.
- In addition to enhancing privacy and content filtering, Meta is also extending its focus towards entertainment by introducing user-friendly safety measures designed to protect minors from potential dangers associated with social media while still preserving the enjoyable aspects of it.
