Meta updates Facebook privacy policy for minors, new users’ profiles will be private by default

Meta is introducing a new Facebook policy and updates focused on protecting teenagers from “suspicious adults.” The highlight of the announcement is a default setting for new underage users that will automatically set their profiles to private upon joining the platform.

Facebook will now set new accounts created by teens under the age of 16 to private by default. The same will be applied to new users under the age of 18 “in certain countries,” which were not specified in the announcement. A similar policy was implemented on Instagram last year.

Meta will not change the privacy settings for existing teenage Facebook users. But the company said it would “encourage” them to manually set their accounts to private. They will be presented with options to control who can see their friends list, who they follow, their tagged posts, review tagged posts before they appear on their profile, and who can comment on their public posts.

The social media giant has also started testing Facebook features aimed to lessen their potential interactions with “suspicious adults” on the platform. “A ‘suspicious’ account is one that belongs to an adult that may have recently been blocked or reported by a young person, for example,” Meta said.

In this experiment, teens on Facebook will not be able to message adults with suspicious accounts. Adults that will be categorized in the same manner would not appear on teens’ People You May Know recommendations. As for Instagram, Meta is also testing a way for suspicious accounts to not see the message button when they are viewing a teen’s page.

The company announced new initiatives with its partners to safeguard young Facebook users. Meta said it is working with National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to build a global platform for teenagers who may be at risk of having their intimate or sensitive photos shared with the public. “We’re also working with Thorn and their NoFiltr brand to create educational materials that reduce the shame and stigma surrounding intimate images,” Meta added.

Facebook currently only allows teenagers ages 13 and above to sign up on the social media platform. But, as many know, it is not that difficult to create a new account with inaccurate personal information. To try to combat this, the platform has created a system to report accounts that may belong to users under 13 years old.

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