As part of its defense against claims that its services are detrimental to adolescent users, Meta, the company that owns Instagram and Facebook, announced on Tuesday that it will stop allowing marketers to target restricts ads to teens based on gender.
The social media behemoth announced in February that, going forward, advertisers, who generate the vast majority of the company’s enormous earnings, will only be able to target advertising at minors globally using age and geographical information.
Another departure from custom, the business stated teens will no longer receive ads based on their prior use of apps owned by Meta.
Meta acknowledged in a blog post that kids aren’t necessarily as competent as adults to make decisions about how their online data is used for advertising and made changes accordingly.
“Meta, the Company that Owns Instagram and Facebook, Announces Changes in Advertising Targeting for Teens”
The Meta made modifications in response to comments from parents and professionals and it will comply with new regulations in various nations regarding content aimed toward children.
The organization formerly known as Facebook is coming under more and more pressure to stop showing its users highly tailored adverts, a technique that generates billions of dollars in yearly revenue for the firm from advertisers.
The European Union awarded a 390-million-euro ($413-million) fine last week to the Silicon Valley giant as part of a years-long dispute over advertising after a protracted court battle.
More concerningly for the Mark Zuckerberg-founded company, European regulators also disapproved of the legal justification Meta provided for collecting users’ personal information for use in targeted advertising.
For violating privacy laws through targeted advertisements, regulators have also opened investigations against and fined Google and Apple.
Tech companies and a partisan Congress in Washington have stalled national legislation by targeting local law enforcement as the primary focus of their lobbying efforts in the US.
Seattle, Washington, in the US, has a public school system that last week sued several digital companies, including Meta, for allegedly harming kids’ mental health and causing them to experience melancholy and anxiety.
Officials from the public education system declared that they are “holding social media firms accountable for the devastation they have wreaked on the social, emotional, and mental health” of adolescent students.