Overview
- Internal materials reported by The Washington Post describe a late-2023 pivot that put teen growth on Instagram ahead of Threads.
- Teams were tasked to tune recommendations, boost discovery, surface teen-friendly influencers, and make friend-finding easier.
- Meta has leaned on Teen Accounts defaults that make profiles more private, restrict unwanted DMs, and filter sensitive content using a PG-13-style standard.
- The PG-13 framing drew criticism from researchers and advocates, who questioned borrowing movie-rating language.
- Regulatory pressure has intensified, with more than 40 state AG suits against Meta and New York now requiring mental health warnings on features like infinite scroll, autoplay, and algorithmic ranking.