Meta addresses problematic feeds with global Teen Accounts

New content settings for Meta's 13+ Teen Accounts are now available across Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger — and the company is taking aim at repetitive, potentially harmful feeds.

The company announced today that the company's stricter content settings are rolling out to all teen accounts across Meta platforms, a global rollout promised last year. Meta said it worked with trust and safety company Alice (previously known as ActiveFence) to assess the deployment and stress test the teen-oriented features.

"Instagram Teen Accounts in the default 13+ setting saw 68 percent less mature content than on the competitor’s teen experience," the company wrote of its testing. "Where Instagram Teen Accounts did see mature content, it was less intense than the mature content seen on the competitor and in movies rated 13+."

In addition, Meta explained it's testing ways to limit certain types of frequently-occurring content on Instagram, including those related to "nutrition, weightlifting, or how to cope with anxiety." The company said that these posts "should be balanced with other types of content rather than shown repeatedly."

A September report spearheaded by Meta whistleblower Arturo Béjar and research organization Cybersecurity for Democracy found that many of Meta's core teen safety features failed to work as advertised under testing.

While Meta denied its safety features were ineffective, the company announced a major revamp of Instagram Teen Accounts in October, likening the content restrictions to PG-13 movies — and then promptly came under fire for using the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) rating without permission. Meta and the MPAA reached a resolution in March, following a formal cease and desist that claimed Meta's use of the PG-13 rating was "false advertising."

Amid a history-making social media addiction trial, Meta reconfigured its teen settings, and later added new features, including expanded parental supervision tools, as well as global age detection.