Overview
- An internal analysis reviewed by Reuters found that teens who often felt worse about their bodies saw 10.5% eating‑disorder‑adjacent content versus 3.3% for peers.
- Researchers also reported higher exposure to provocative categories such as mature themes, risky behavior, harm and suffering, totaling 27% of these teens’ feeds versus 13.6% for others.
- Meta surveyed 1,149 teens during the 2023–24 school year and manually sampled three months of their Instagram feeds to evaluate what content they were shown.
- The study cautioned it cannot establish causation and noted existing screening tools failed to detect 98.5% of content flagged internally as potentially inappropriate for teens.
- Meta acknowledged the research and said it has halved age‑restricted content shown to teens since July and is moving to PG‑13 guidance for teen accounts.