In July 2025, Meta gathered parenting influencers from all over Australia at a waterfront venue overlooking the Sydney Opera House. It was a camping-themed event and in many ways was like any other influencer affair. There were Instagram-branded tents to take pictures in, an Instagram-branded step-and-repeat, a custom-tote making station and Instagram-branded snacks and coffee cups.
But this “screen smart” event wasn’t about the photo op. Meta was playing defense: the company had five months until the Australian government planned to enforce a new law that banned children under 16 from using social media platforms. The Silicon Valley-based firm told influencers that blanket bans on teens’ use of social media weren’t effective and recruited them to send a message to their hundreds of thousands of followers: Meta already had tools to help parents keep teens safe on Instagram.
Since 2024, Meta has tapped an army of influencers to promote its safety tools for teens. A new report by the Tech Transparency Project, a digital advocacy group, shows that whenever a government began discussing social media regulations for teens, Meta started recruiting lifestyle, parenting and mental health creators to promote parental and other safety controls the company already offers, including its accounts for users between the ages of 13 and 17, which have more restrictions than regular accounts. Meta recruited influencers through events, like the one in Australia, and paid some of them for their advocacy by sponsoring posts, according to the report.
Meta also found support from parent, advocacy and research groups that it supports financially in pushing back against teen bans or restrictions, according to the report. Meta’s reliance on influencers to fight the bans suggests the company recognizes it can’t fight these measures, which would could cost it millions of users, alone, said Katie Paul, the director of the Tech Transparency Project. Meta needs to use influencers to spread its message because people don’t trust the company, said Paul.
Responding to questions about the report, Meta said that the firm works hard to “build strong protections for teens and effective controls for parents”. The law, which went into effect in December 2025, required social media companies to shut down existing teen accounts and reject new ones. (Meta already had rules in place that barred kids younger than 13 from opening an account.) Concern over teen use of social media has been growing since at least 2021, when whistleblowers including Frances Haugen and Arturo Bejar shared internal Meta documents showing the company knew teens were being exposed to harmful content but didn’t work to mitigate those harms. In the US, several states sued Meta, accusing the company of deliberately making its platform addictive to younger users.
Meta has since introduced teen accounts with built-in restrictions, including limits on who can message teen users and more sensitive content filters that limit their exposure to violent or harmful videos. But concerns have remained. Australia passed its law after a 2025 study it commissioned found that 96% of children between the ages of 10 and 15 used social media and that 71% of those children were exposed to harmful content, including fight videos, posts that encourage unhealthy eating or exercise habits and sexist or otherwise hateful posts.
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