Meta expands “13+” teen content defaults worldwide across Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger

Meta is expanding a set of age-focused content controls for teen accounts across its major apps, rolling out default “13+” settings globally on Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger. The “13+” setting is designed to steer what teens can see and how they can interact, with the company saying the goal is to reduce exposure to themes it considers inappropriate for that age range by default. Meta also said it is testing a new approach intended to stop teens from repeatedly encountering certain types of content. (Meta provided the update on June 2, 2026.)

The changes follow an earlier rollout: last October, Meta updated Instagram teen accounts in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada, defaulting teens into the new 13+ setting. In that pilot, Meta said 9 out of 10 teens stayed in the setting after launch. For parents who want additional restrictions, Meta also introduced a stricter “Limited Content” option.

On Facebook, Meta said the new 13+ default is meant to hide content it deems inappropriate for teens in major discovery surfaces such as Feed and Reels, and to limit teens’ ability to interact with profiles, pages, groups, and events that primarily post content deemed inappropriate. On Messenger, the 13+ default is intended to restrict teens’ ability to view links to inappropriate Facebook content and to chat with accounts that primarily share content Meta says is inappropriate for teens on Facebook. Meta said “Limited Content” will also become available on Facebook and Messenger later this year.

Meta said the rollout is also guided by ongoing parent feedback. The company said it has invited parents worldwide to rate content on Facebook and Instagram, and reported that “hundreds of thousands” of parents have rated more than 15 million pieces of content. In a survey described by Meta at the end of April, parents in the US, UK, Australia, and Canada reviewed Facebook content recommended to teens, and Meta said fewer than 2% of posts were considered inappropriate for teens by most parents.

Beyond blocking inappropriate categories, Meta is also working on the way recommendations repeat. The company said some content, such as posts about nutrition, weightlifting, or how to cope with anxiety, can be helpful, but it believes it should be balanced rather than shown repeatedly. Meta said it is testing ways to limit the volume of posts of this kind that teens see in a single browsing session, including in Explore, Feed, and Reels.

To evaluate whether the teen settings function under adversarial conditions, Meta commissioned an external assessment by Alice, an online safety company that was formerly known as ActiveFence. Meta said Alice is made up of online safety experts and ran stress testing to benchmark what teens could see. Alice compared mature themes found on Instagram (including within the teen experience) against a leading competitor’s teen experience and against movies rated 13+, using Meta’s age-appropriate guidelines as a reference point.

In the results Meta highlighted, Alice found that Instagram teen accounts in the default 13+ setting saw 68% less mature content than the competitor’s teen experience. Meta said the stricter Limited Content setting provided an additional layer, with a reported 96% reduction in mature content compared with the competitor. Meta also said Alice reported that where mature content appeared, it was less intense than what was seen on the competitor and in 13+ rated movies. Meta further said Alice found that Instagram blocked mature search terms more frequently than the competitor, and it described several functional guardrails, including that teens cannot select “More Content” without a parent’s permission and that teens in Limited Content cannot see or post comments.

Meta said the external assessment also identified two areas for improvement, which it said it addressed quickly. First, Meta said it updated “detection indicates” to better catch cases where teens might interact with accounts that regularly share age-inappropriate content, after Alice identified “a few exceptions.” Second, Meta said that in rare cases where researchers encountered mature content, it often involved “risky stunts” or viral challenges. Meta said it found that a trend involving “car surfing” had not been covered by its policies in the same way as “subway surfing,” and that it updated its policies to restrict that content for teens.

The broader effort reflects how major social platforms are increasingly translating offline age rating concepts into online feed controls. In this case, Meta says the 13+ framework is inspired by public movie-rating guidelines that parents are already familiar with, and it emphasizes that social media moderation differs from a formal ratings board. Meta also said it does not work with the Motion Picture Association, and that the two systems are not identical.

What Meta did not disclose in detail leaves some questions for observers to watch. The company did not specify which additional countries receive the global expansion first, how long the rollout will take, or the precise mechanics of the experiment designed to reduce repeated exposure to certain content types. It also did not provide parallel quantitative results for the Facebook and Messenger 13+ controls, focusing the percentage comparisons on Instagram in the external assessment summary. The company said more details on Alice’s methodology and results are available through Alice, but it did not reproduce those materials in the newsroom post.

For now, the company’s next milestones appear to be operational: continuing external stress testing, tracking whether the “repetition” experiments perform as intended when expanded beyond testing, and seeing how quickly the Limited Content option reaches Facebook and Messenger later this year. Meta’s stated emphasis on parent ratings and adversarial evaluation suggests it expects regulators and civil society groups to keep scrutinizing teen safeguards as these defaults move from pilot markets to a broader international roll-out.