How Research and Consultation Informed Instagram Teen Accounts | A New Protected Experience for Teens, Guided by Parents

We’re introducing Teen Accounts on Instagram. Teen Accounts have built-in protections that limit who can contact them and the content they see. These accounts also provide new ways for teens to explore their interests.

Starting September 17, we’ll automatically place teens into Teen Accounts on Instagram, and teens under 16 need a parent’s permission to change any of their account settings to be less strict. If parents want more oversight over their older teen's (16+) experiences, they simply have to set up parental supervision. These settings apply to teens already using Instagram and to teens signing up to the app. You can find a full overview of Teen Accounts in our announcement.

We worked tirelessly and thoughtfully to build Teen Accounts. We’re proud of our work to reimagine the app for teens, and we’ve made many important design decisions along the way. We want to be transparent about these decisions and explain how our research and consultation with experts informed them – so we’re sharing a detailed overview of our efforts in this report.

Co-designing immersive social age-appropriate experiences | Insights from young people, parents and advisors

As part of Meta’s commitment to build the metaverse responsibly while providing safe and age-appropriate experiences, this report shares learnings from multistakeholder exploration on the topic of social, multiplayer online games on mobile and immersive settings with parents and their children aged 10-13 in the US, UK, Ireland and Australia, paired with expert observation and consultation sessions with third-party advisors.

Our goal was to elevate the perspectives of families and third-party advisors to inform our product design strategy for child access to age-appropriate immersive social experiences in Meta Horizon Worlds on mobile and in Meta Quest.

This report is intended for government, academia, civil society and industry. We are publishing learnings and outputs to share openly with the broader community of expertise around age-appropriate digital design.

Assessing the Success of Privacy Education Products | Research Findings

Product makers implement a wide variety of privacy education tools in their apps to inform users about data practices and empower them to make informed privacy choices. They are generally understood to be helpful, but measuring the effectiveness of privacy education can be challenging.

In this report, we explain the challenges with assessing the success of privacy education products and share Meta’s approach to measuring effectiveness through case studies on Instagram’s location data transparency feature and Meta’s Privacy Policy updates.

At Meta, our approach involves defining specific, contextual success criteria for each privacy education experience, designing with these outcomes in mind, and using fit-for-purpose methods such as feedback surveys to ensure those goals are met.

Data Transparency and Control in XR and the Metaverse | Early UX Explorations with People in APAC

The technologies which underpin XR and the metaverse continue to develop rapidly, and researching user experience (UX) and data use in the metaverse is crucial to ensure that these immersive technologies prioritizes user-centric design, transparency, and privacy.

Co-designing with teens and parents for online supervision | Global insights from young people, guardians and experts

Building on TTC Labs' multi-year effort, in 2021-22 we conducted co-design research and consultation with teens, guardians and experts on relevant privacy, safety and wellbeing considerations for online supervision.

This report presents the findings and impact of this action research project on online supervision, where we held co-design sessions with 166 teens and 156 guardians paired with consultation sessions with 125 experts across 10 countries (US, UK, Ireland, Australia, Brazil, Japan, India, Mexico, Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire).

People-centric approaches to algorithmic explainability | Exploring Insights from product and policy prototyping with startups

Providing transparency and explainability of artificial intelligence (AI) presents complex challenges across industry and society, raising questions around how to build confidence and empower people in their use of digital products.

The purpose of this report is to contribute to collaborative, cross-sector efforts to address these questions. It shares the key findings of a project conducted in 2021 between TTC Labs and Open Loop in collaboration with the Singapore Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC). Through this project we have developed a series of operational insights and guidance for bringing greater transparency to AI-powered products.