Meta activates Facebook ‘teen accounts’ worldwide

FILE- In this March 13, 2019, file photo Facebook, Messenger and Instagram apps are are displayed on an iPhone in New York. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)

PARIS, France -- Meta said Thursday it was activating so-called “teen accounts” with additional protections for adolescent Facebook and Messenger users worldwide, months after their deployment in major English-speaking countries.

“We’ve placed hundreds of millions of teens in Teen Accounts across Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger, and now we’re expanding them to teens around the world on Facebook and Messenger,” the US group said in a blog post.

Meta’s teen accounts, which offer additional security settings, content restrictions and parental controls for users aged 13 to 17, were first introduced on Instagram last year.

The company said in April that it had extended them across Facebook and the social network’s Messenger private chat service in the U.S., Canada, Australia and Britain.

Restrictions on Meta’s teen accounts are “designed to address parents’ top concerns with automatic protections to limit who their teens are talking to online and the content they’re seeing, and ensure their time is well spent,” the company said.

The limits cannot be removed without parental consent for users under 16.

Recent years have seen an upswell of concern about teens’ use of social networks, including fears young people spend too much time on screens with a lack of moderation on some platforms.