Facebook will restrict how advertisers can target users under 18 across Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger, only allowing age, gender, and location targeting
Advertisers on Instagram, Facebook and Messenger will no longer be able to market to under 18s based on their interests
The Guardian
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook had already narrowed targeting in housing, jobs, and credit, while Instagram's new birthdate requirement gave it a clearer basis for identifying younger users. The new youth rule applies that safety-and-access logic across Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger.
Advertisers using Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger lose interest-based audience selection for under-18s, leaving age, gender, and location as the permitted inputs.
Meta must enforce a distinct targeting boundary for identified teen accounts across its three services, making the age information collected by Instagram operationally important.
Second-order effects
Meta's later removal of gender and in-app activity for teen campaigns shows the initial permitted-targeting set becoming narrower, forcing advertisers to rely less on platform-level audience segmentation.
The sequence points toward youth advertising being governed as an access-control category rather than a standard personalization product, with the allowable data inputs progressively constrained.
The trend: Major platforms are moving from finely segmented teen advertising toward increasingly restricted, and in some markets unavailable, youth ad products.
“Prompted with the hashtag #preteen, Instagram was recommending posts tagged #preteenmodel and #preteenfeet, both of which featured sometimes graphic comments from what appeared to be adult male users on pictures featuring young girls.” https://www.wsj.com/...
🚨Campaign win!🚨 Facebook finally admit that #surveillanceadvertising to kids is as pernicious as we've been saying it is for years, and will be turning it off across FB, Messenger and Instagram in coming weeks. Campaigning works! https://www.nbcnews.com/...
THREAD: Facebook's made major changes to ad targeting for kids under 18, “previously available targeting options, like those based on interests...will no longer be available to advertisers.” TTP's Director called for this change in @ConsumerReports in May https://www.consumerrepo…
Facebook announces product changes to protect kids with a reporter. Reporter then finds related heinous stuff about kids that Facebook should have removed in the first place. Classic. https://twitter.com/...
We're also making it harder for adults to contact teens who don't want to hear from them, and limiting ways advertisers can reach young people on Instagram and Facebook. More details 👇 https://about.instagram.com/ ...
.@Facebook's decision to limit surveillance advertising to under-18s is a step in the right direction. But this falls short of overhauling Facebook's core business of invasive surveillance to protect the human rights of everyone in the digital world. 1/4 https://www.bloomberg.com…