Islamabad, July 24, 2025 – Meta has unveiled a series of new tools and updates designed to enhance safety for teens and children across its platforms, including Instagram and Facebook. The updates focus on improving direct messaging security, expanding nudity protection, and strengthening safeguards for adult-managed accounts that prominently feature children.
Enhanced Safety Features for Teen Accounts
Teen Accounts will now provide more contextual details about message senders, including:
- Safety tips to help teens recognize suspicious behavior.
- Account creation dates to identify potentially fake profiles.
- A one-tap option to block and report a message sender.
In June alone, Meta’s safety notices helped teens block 1 million accounts, with another 1 million accounts reported after warnings appeared.
New “Location Notice” to Combat Sextortion Scams
Meta is rolling out a “Location Notice” feature on Instagram to help users detect potential cross-border sextortion scams. The alert notifies users when they are messaging someone in a different country—a common tactic used by exploiters.
-
Over 10% of users who saw the notice clicked to learn more about protective steps.
Nudity Protection in Direct Messages
Meta’s nudity protection feature, which automatically blurs suspected nude images in DMs, continues to be widely used:
- 99% of users, including teens, kept the setting enabled as of June.
- The feature has reduced the forwarding of explicit content, with nearly 45% of users opting not to share such images after receiving a warning.
Stronger Protections for Adult-Managed Accounts Featuring Children
For accounts run by adults that prominently feature children (e.g., parent-managed or talent agency accounts), Meta is implementing Teen Account-level protections, including:
- Strict message controls to limit unwanted interactions.
- Hidden Words to automatically filter offensive comments.
Additionally, Meta will:
- Reduce visibility of these accounts to suspicious users, making them harder to find via search or recommendations.
- Remove monetization features, such as gift acceptance and paid subscriptions, for such accounts.
Crackdown on Harmful Accounts
Meta has taken aggressive action against exploitative behavior:
- 135,000 Instagram accounts were removed for leaving sexualized comments or requesting explicit images from accounts featuring children under 13.
- An additional 500,000 linked accounts on Facebook and Instagram were also removed.
Meta is collaborating with other tech companies through the Tech Coalition’s Lantern program to prevent offenders from resurfacing on other platforms.