Meta agreed in a US case settled on 26 August 2026 to make safety limits the default for teenagers, and funds influencer campaigns abroad promoting Teen Accounts as an alternative to government bans. It runs in India, Canada, Indonesia, Australia, Brazil, New Zealand, Malaysia and the Philippines. Hiten Tejwani has 732,000 followers; Sonam Jaggi has 322,000 followers and her posts reached 310 million views. The Commission designated Reddit and Roblox as very large online platforms; harm to minors is among the risks they have four months to mitigate.
While Meta agreed in a US case settled on 26 August 2026 to make several safety limits the default for teenagers, abroad it is funding influencer campaigns that promote Teen Accounts as an alternative to government bans. The company pays parent influencers with large followings, celebrities and in some cases child-safety groups to produce content arguing for parental controls instead of an age limit.[1]
The countries where the campaign runs include India, Canada, Indonesia, Australia, Brazil, New Zealand, Malaysia and the Philippines. Examples given are the actor Hiten Tejwani, who has 732,000 followers and described Teen Accounts after a call with Meta, and Sonam Jaggi, who has 322,000 followers and whose posts reached 310 million views. Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project, says that if countries around the world follow Australia and enact these bans, Meta will be cut off from the young people it treats as essential to its growth plans.[1]
The Commission designated Reddit and Roblox as very large online platforms and ChatGPT as a very large online search engine. All three had declared that they reach at least 45 million average monthly users in the EU, the threshold that triggers the tier. The three services have four months to comply, which the Commission puts at January 2027. By then they must assess and mitigate the systemic risks arising from their service and their algorithmic systems in relation to the spread of illegal content, harm to minors, users' physical and mental well-being, fundamental rights, electoral processes and public security. Meta's influencer line argues for parental controls instead of an age limit, while the Commission has placed youth-heavy platforms in that obligation set.[2], [1]
