How Meta’s Filter Ban for Minors Could Look in Practice

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Last Wednesday, Meta—the tech giant behind Facebook and Instagram—agreed to pay out roughly $18 billion dollars in a landmark settlement. The agreement will impact 48 states, the District of Columbia, and other U.S. territories, and came about because of a federal lawsuit that claimed the company knew the risks its platforms posed to minors when it came to social media addiction and their mental health, violating state consumer protection laws and child privacy laws.

Besides the mega payout, which will be made in installments over the next 10 years, Meta has also agreed to make major changes to how minors are able to use its products (anyone aged 13 and older can create a Meta profile), including limiting the use of face-altering beauty filters, which have been found to negatively impact teens psychologically. Compared to other changes—like restricting minor use to two hours per day and giving them the option to have a non-personalized feed—what, exactly, the limits on beauty filters will look like is still a bit fuzzy.

The dangers of social media usage for minors are well-documented and excessive use of appearance-altering filters, especially among young girls, can have a negative impact on mental health, so yes, in theory, banning filters is a great idea. Sera Lavelle, PhD, a clinical psychologist in New York City, says she’s witnessed the negative effects of social media show up in her younger patients. “You see a lot of more people becoming obsessed with perfection and feeling extremely lonely,” she says. “We've noticed, even in our own clinical practice, people not even wanting to leave the house if they have a blemish.”

“I don't think that every teenager who uses a filter will develop a mental health problem but if you're repeatedly exposed, it can normalize an unattainable standard, and for vulnerable teens it can contribute to body dissatisfaction, body dysmorphia, and anxiety about their appearance,” agrees Suzanne Wallach, LMFT, founder of SoCalL DBT. “They can start to obsess about comparing themselves and about parts of their body, and it can contribute to the belief that the way they appear naturally isn't good or beautiful enough.”

However, the language in the settlement isn’t explicit about how Meta will decide what “beauty filters” are appropriate for minors to use and how the company will implement regulations to keep them out of the hands of vulnerable teens. All we know, according to the company’s press release about the settlement, is that “extreme makeup filters” will no longer be accessible for the age group. Minors will still be able to use filters that mimic makeup and smoothing effects, Meta says, and that as the measures roll out, what constitutes a bannable filter will come into focus. The impact on teens’ mental health, albeit a positive one, is expected to be minimal, according to the experts Allure spoke with for this story.

“I'd be cautious about expecting a dramatic improvement in mental health just from this, because it's not just beauty filters causing teens to encounter unrealistic beauty standards,” says Wallach. “Their feeds are still filled with professionally altered photos from celebrities, cosmetic procedures, influencers, super-edited images, makeup transformations, and the highlight reel versions of other people's lives.” Meta has shown no indication that it will limit the use of these beauty filters for the many adults on its platforms, plus it’s quite easy for anyone of any age to add a filter to an image or video in another app, then upload it to a Meta platform. Meta says they will work to add a “Made With AI” label when it detects a post has been edited using AI, whether with the company's own tools or a third party.

“It sounds like a step in the right direction, but I could imagine it being not as successful as they think it would be,” Dr. Lavelle says.

This isn’t the company’s first time trying to restrict face-altering filters. In October 2019, Meta banned filters that “encourage plastic surgery,” which included filters that directly promoted cosmetic surgery by showing surgical lines on the skin and drastically altered appearances like adding bigger lips, sharper cheekbones, and a thinner jawline. The recently settled lawsuit alleged that Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg vetoed this ban the following year, but Meta denies that it reversed the ban.

Another hurdle Meta will have to cross is age verification, which is a feature that’s relatively easy to get around. Right now, Meta asks users how old they are via a dropdown box and takes them at their word, though the company says it's working to strengthen the technology used to find people it believes are minors, even if they list an adult birthday, and automatically convert them to a teen account. The company says it could possibly implement new age verification software—either its own version or one from a third party.

Kate Ruane, director for the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, says that will end up being a “privacy disaster.” Meta may end up subjecting its users, regardless of age, to age verification practices that may include requiring a government ID and biometric scans. To enforce the rest of the proposed changes, Ruane says Meta will need to invasively monitor and analyze teens’ activity. "While it might have been helpful for the company to take some of these steps to protect younger users on its own, it's a dangerous game when the government tries to decide what information a group of people can or can't access, and especially so when that decision comes at privacy's expense,” she says.

Still, some advocates for children’s online safety think Meta’s proposed changes aren’t enough. “If we want to be serious about teen mental health, we have to look at the entire system of social media,” Wallach says. “But I do think this is a meaningful start, especially paired with other changes.”

According to The New York Times, Meta and other tech companies, including YouTube, TikTok, and Snap, have thousands of cases open across multiple states that allege the platforms are addictive for children. Only time will tell if Meta in particular will continue to settle out of court or head to trial.