Facebook Announces It Will Restrict Access To Teens’ Data

This week, Facebook’s parent company Meta announced that it will restrict the data available to marketers to target ads at teenage users. This change comes in the wake of criticisms that the company hasn’t done enough to protect young users — and in some cases, has actively ignored signs that it was harming them.

Starting in February, marketers won’t be able to see a young user’s gender or the type of posts they have engaged with on Facebook or Instagram. And beginning in March, the company will give teenagers the ability to go into their settings and choose to “see less” of certain kinds of advertisements.

“As part of our continued work to keep our apps age-appropriate for teens, we’re making further changes to their ad experiences,” the company said in a blog post. “We recognize that teens aren’t necessarily as equipped as adults to make decisions about how their online data is used for advertising, particularly when it comes to showing them products available to purchase. For that reason, we’re further restricting the options advertisers have to reach teens, as well as the information we use to show ads to teens.”

Although these tweaks may seem small in the grand scheme of things, they still represent a step forward for user privacy and security — and that’s a positive no matter what.




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