Credit: Aedrian Salazar via Unsplash
Meta is giving parents visibility into the topics shaping their teenager's algorithm, as part of an expansion of its supervision tools across Instagram, Facebook, Messenger and Meta Horizon.
Parents and guardians in Australia can now view the general interest categories their teens engage with on Instagram through the supervision tools, covering all available categories within the platform's Your Algorithm feature.
The changes apply to parents of teens aged 16 and 17 who are using parental supervision.
Australia has banned, from December 2025, under-16s from social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit and YouTube.
Meta said it would soon begin sending parents in select markets notifications when their teen adds a new interest to their algorithm. Parents can tap on an interest to get more detail about the context behind it.
Teens will be able to see that their parent or guardian can view the general categories of their interests but not the individual topics or specific content in their feed.
Family Centre has also been updated to consolidate parental controls across Instagram, Meta Horizon, Facebook and Messenger in a single location, removing the need to switch between apps.
Parents can now send a single invitation to supervise their teen across all four platforms. Meta said aggregated time spent across apps would be added to Family Centre in the coming months.
The number of US teens enrolled in supervision on Instagram has more than doubled since last year, according to Meta.
The updates build on Teen Accounts, which include automatic privacy settings, limits on who can contact teens, and content management tools, already available on Instagram, Facebook and Messenger.
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