Meta blocks strangers from messaging teens in new safety update

On Thursday, Meta announced a series of changes to its messaging services on Facebook and Instagram aimed at keeping teenagers safe from strangers and unwanted communications. 

The new updates come amid revelations that the tech giant had long shown a "historical reluctance" to protect vulnerable users.

According to Meta, anyone over the age of 19 will now be unable to message teens who don't follow them, and teens will be limited to sending one text-only message to such users. 

Additionally, on Instagram teens will now only be able to message or be added to group chats by users they already follow or are connected to, and on Facebook by users they're friends with or connected to via phone contacts.

While restricting adults from messaging teens is a system-level change and can't be switched on or off, the other updates, which impact all teens under 16 or 18, depending on the country, can be changed in settings, though users with supervised accounts will need to get their parents' permission before doing so.

Impacted users will soon receive a notification alerting them to the changes.

Meta also announced that it is working on an update that is "designed to help protect teens from seeing unwanted and potentially inappropriate images in their messages from people they’re already connected to, and to discourage them from sending these types of images themselves," set to launch later this year.

Earlier this month, Meta revealed that it had moved to protect teens from seeing inappropriate content on their feeds by automatically placing them into "the most restrictive content control setting on Instagram and Facebook" and hiding more results related to suicide, self-harm, and eating disorders.

According to CBS News, around the same time, freshly unredacted documents from a New Mexico lawsuit against the tech giant showed that between 2020 and 2021, the company was aware of issues related to the protection of teens on its platforms, but did little more than the bare minimum for years.