The news: Meta rolled out new teen safety controls globally on Tuesday for users 13 and older, the company announced, after two consecutive losses in child safety cases. The update builds on Meta’s Teen Accounts program, which makes teen accounts private by default and gives parents more control.

• A new feature Meta is testing would limit how often teen users are shown posts on potentially harmful topics, including anxiety, nutrition, and weight lifting. Meta noted that this content “can be helpful, but it should be balanced with other types of content rather than shown repeatedly.”
• Meta cited data from AI security company Alice to underscore the effectiveness of its safety measures. The company noted that Instagram Teen Accounts in the default setting saw 68% less mature content than competitor experiences; for accounts using the stricter Limited Content setting, that figure rose to 96%.

Catching up: Meta has been in the hot seat amid a broader crackdown on child safety online.

• Meta was found liable in March for harming young audiences by failing to warn them about the risks tied to its platforms; the company was responsible for 70% of $3 million in compensatory damages, while YouTube, also part of the lawsuit, was responsible for 30%.
• The US Supreme Court declined to hear Meta’s appeal in a case brought by Vermont last week, which accuses the company of knowingly designing addictive features that harm teens.
• The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court also ruled in April that Meta must face a lawsuit from the state’s attorney general which alleges that Instagram’s design causes harm and addiction.

Meta ramps up safety efforts: The company is putting emphasis on new measures designed to better protect its young audience.

• In response to Australia’s under-16 social media ban and similar rulings globally, Meta removed about 550,000 accounts belonging to minors across Instagram, Facebook, and Threads.
• Meta has also introduced new features like parental alerts, which notifies parents when their teens repeatedly search for self-harm or suicide-related terms in a short time frame.

But whether Meta is doing enough to address potential harms to teens remains an open question, particularly after groups including nonprofit Fairplay found that 64% of Instagram Teen Accounts’ safety tools were ineffective last year. And with US adults widely supporting stricter federal rules on children’s social media use, Meta is still facing an uphill battle to convince parents and regulators of its platforms’ safety.

Implications for marketers: Safety updates may not be enough to persuade regulators, especially as Meta’s tools have thus far been relatively ineffective. Should Meta continue its string of legal losses, marketers may face significant format changes on Instagram and Facebook, which account for 75.5% of US social ad revenues.

The moves could point to a future with tighter teen safety controls across social media more broadly, greatly affecting advertisers’ ad targeting capabilities. Brands may face a higher burden of responsibility to ensure ads are not appearing near harmful content. Meta’s social media peers, meanwhile, are likely to keep introducing youth safety measures like content filtering and age-gating that could alter engagement metrics.

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