Meta profits, kids pay the price.

Our demands of Meta to make their products safer for kids:

Stop promoting dangerous content to kids.

End the algorithmic promotion of dangerous content to children under 18, including explicit and sexualizing content, racism and hate speech, content promoting disordered eating or self-harm, dangerous viral challenges, and content promoting drugs and alcohol.

Prevent sexual predators and other bad actors from using Meta platforms to abuse kids.

Implement measures to prevent nefarious actors including sexual predators, sextortionists, and drug dealers from finding, meeting, and grooming children and teens across all Meta platforms. Start by purging known problematic adult accounts and not connecting them to kids, and upholding firewalls to prevent unknown adults from communicating with young users through direct messages.

Provide transparent, fast resolutions to kids’ reports of problematic content or interactions.

Create fast, responsive reporting and feedback procedures, including things like telling kids how their report was resolved, removing illegal or harmful material and banning harmful accounts quickly, and detecting and nudging kids during potentially unsafe conversations.

Research

0 %

of young teen Instagram users have encountered unsafe content and unwanted messages in the past month.

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young teen users reported receiving unwanted messages or contact from another user in the past month.

0 %

of 13-15-year-old users experienced at least one piece of unsafe content or unwanted message on a weekly basis.

0 %

of young teen users have found that Instagram’s “Suggested for You” or “People You May Know” pages recommended accounts of people they did not know but believed to be run by adults.

Instagram launched Teen Accounts in September 2024, promising that private profiles, restricted messaging, and parental supervision tools would better protect kids. We wanted to hear from youth directly about their experiences since then to gain better understanding of the scale and frequency of unsafe content and contact risks for younger teens navigating this environment.

Our polling (as well as research from our partners) offered a sobering look at Instagram Teen Accounts’ efficacy:

Nearly half (47%) of young teen Instagram users have encountered unsafe content and unwanted messages in the past month.
23% received unwanted messages from strangers in the past month.
Half were recommended accounts believed to be run by unknown adults.

Campaign Press

TechCrunch

April 24, 2025

Parents who lost children to online harms protest outside of Meta’s NYC office

Bloomberg

April 24, 2025

Grieving Parents March to Meta NY Headquarters, Demanding Change

ABC7 News

April 24, 2025

Grieving families hold vigil outside New York City Meta office, demand more protections for kids

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Heat Initiative exists because the world’s most valuable and powerful tech companies have failed to protect kids from online child sexual exploitation.

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