Instagram stops letting random adults send messages to teenagers

Enlarge (credit: Dmytro Betsenko | Moment)

Some teens will now have their Facebook and Instagram accounts defaulted to a setting that blocks strangers from sending direct messages, Meta announced Thursday.

This default setting is designed to stop teens under 16 (“or under 18 in certain countries”) from receiving “unwanted contact,” Meta said. In addition to restricting “adults over the age of 19 from messaging teens who don’t follow them” on Instagram, the new policy also blocks teens from receiving direct messages from other teens they do not follow. On Facebook, it restricts any accounts from contacting teens on Messenger who appear neither on their Facebook friends list or in their phone’s contacts.

This change comes after a whistleblower, Arturo Bejar—a senior engineer who formerly led online security, safety, and protection efforts at Meta—told Congress last November that he returned to work for Meta as a consultant after discovering that his 14-year-old child and her friends “repeatedly faced unwanted sexual advances, misogyny, and harassment” on Instagram. According to Bejar, his subsequent research documented “staggering levels of abuse” targeting young users, with at least 13 percent of users aged 13-15 reporting that they received unwanted sexual advances in a single week.