Underage Users News Today

Minors' access to social media is still a debatable topic as issues on freedom and abuse become more prevalent.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Facebook parent Meta Platforms deliberately engineered its social platforms to hook kids and knew — but never disclosed — it had received millions of complaints about

According to reports, Meta said in a statement that the complaint misrepresents its work over the past decade to make the online experience safe for teens and said it doesnt design its products to be addictive to younger users.

This is after Meta executives publicly said in testimony before the US congress that the companys age-checking processes were effective and were used to remove underage accounts.

The privacy charges are part of a larger federal lawsuit, filed last month by California, Colorado and 31 other states in US District Court for the Northern District of California. The lawsuit accuses Meta of unfairly ensnaring young people on its Instagram and Facebook platforms while concealing internal studies showing user harms. And it seeks to force Meta to stop using certain features that the states say have harmed young users.

US News: Meta is facing a lawsuit for violating federal law on children's privacy. The lawsuit alleges that Meta routinely collected personal information from

Reuters reported exclusively in March that Snapchat owner Snap Inc had only removed a few dozen children aged under-13 from its platform in Britain last year, while UK media regulator Ofcom estimates it has thousands of underage users.

The FTC proposes new privacy measures for Meta’s Facebook to protect minors, including a ban on monetizing data from users under 18.

Meta, formerly Facebook, has announced that it is adding parental controls to all Quest virtual reality (VR) headsets that will allow parents to keep a tab on underage users screen time and receive approval requests for purchases.

Lawmakers met with executives from YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat to know what protocols they have done to protect underage users on their platforms.