Meta launches much stricter message setting for teens on Facebook and Instagram

Following recent changes to the teen experience on its social apps, Meta announcement a harsher change intended to help protect teenagers from unwanted contact.

After limiting teens' ability to view sensitive content on Instagram and Facebook, Meta today introduced a stricter message setting for teens using those two social apps.

Until now, Meta prohibited adults over 19 from sending messages to teens who didn't follow them. Additionally, the company limits the type and number of DMs people will be able to send to someone who doesn't follow them to a single text message.

The new setting announced today defaults to turning off teens' ability to receive direct messages from anyone they don't follow or connect with on Instagram, including other teens.

When the new setting is enabled, teens will only receive messages from people they already follow or are connected with. According to Meta, teens on “supervised accounts” will need to get permission from their parents to change this setting.

The new default setting will apply to all teens under 16 (or under 18 in some countries). Affected people will receive a notification informing them of the new changes on Instagram at the top of their feed.

Besides Instagram, Meta revealed that it's also making changes to the teen default settings on Messenger, so those under 16 (or 18 in some countries) will only receive messages from Facebook friends or people with whom they are connected via telephone contacts.

Finally, Meta plans to launch another feature that will help protect teens from seeing unwanted and potentially inappropriate images in their messages from people they are already connected with.