Meta has rolled out a fresh set of safety updates for teen users across Instagram, Facebook and Messenger, as large social media platforms face growing scrutiny globally over the impact of online content on children and adolescents.

The company said its 13+ content settings for Teen Accounts have now been rolled out globally across Instagram, Facebook and Messenger. The move is aimed at ensuring that teens are placed in age-appropriate experiences by default, while giving parents more visibility into how their children use Meta’s platforms.

The updates come at a time when social media companies are under pressure from regulators, parents and child safety groups to do more to protect young users from harmful content, addictive usage patterns and unsafe interactions online.

“Keeping teens safe is one of our most important priorities, and these updates — from 13+ content settings across Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger, to AI-powered age detection and new parental alerts — reflect our commitment to building age-appropriate experiences by default,” said Natasha Jog, Director, Public Policy, Meta, India.

Under the new default setting on Facebook, Meta said it will hide content considered inappropriate for teens in areas such as Feed and Reels. It will also limit teens’ ability to interact with Profiles, Pages, Groups and Events that primarily post inappropriate content.

The company said the aim is for teens to see content similar to what they would encounter in an age-appropriate movie by default. On Messenger, the 13+ setting will limit teens’ ability to view links to inappropriate Facebook content or chat with accounts that primarily share such content on Facebook.

Meta is also expanding the use of artificial intelligence to identify underage accounts and place users in the right safety settings. The company said its AI systems will look beyond self-declared age and analyse signals across posts, comments, bios and captions. These systems may look for contextual clues, such as birthday celebrations or references to school grades, to assess whether an account belongs to an underage user.

The company said it is also adding visual analysis as a technique to support age detection. Meta said this is not facial recognition and that the AI looks at general visual cues, such as height or bone structure, to estimate a person’s age, rather than identify a specific individual.

A key update is around self-harm and suicide-related searches. Instagram will notify parents using supervision if their teen repeatedly searches for terms related to suicide or self-harm within a short period of time. The feature has been rolled out to supervising parents in the European Union, Brazil and India.

Meta said supervising parents and teens will begin receiving notifications informing them that these alerts are being introduced.

The company is also consolidating parental controls through Family Centre, which will allow parents of teens enrolled in supervision to manage activity across Instagram, Meta Horizon, Facebook and Messenger from one place.