Meta’s campaign to promote scrutinized youth safety features involved hundreds of family influencers

By Clare Duffy, CNN

New York (CNN) — Meta has partnered with a network of mom and family influencers to spread the word about its teen safety tools and message that Instagram is safe for teens, according to a new tech watchdog report. The promotional push has come as Meta faces ongoing concerns from online safety groups, parents and advocates about those tools’ effectiveness.

“Parents, you are going to love this,” influencer Sadie Robertson Huff, known for starring in the reality TV series “Duck Dynasty,” said in a post in October 2024 cited in the report. She added that Instagram’s Teen Accounts settings gave her peace of mind as she thought about her then-3-year-old joining the platform one day.

“If you are a parent of a teen, I strongly advise you to take a deep dive into Instagram Teen Accounts because they are providing maximum protection,” lifestyle and family influencer Leroy Garrett said in an April post cited in the report that is tagged as a paid partnership.

At the end of the captions on each post and others like them: #MetaPartner.

Meta has sponsored hundreds of influencers, as well as doctors and psychologists, over the past two years to promote its safety features and portray it as a company committed to youth wellbeing, according to the report from the Tech Transparency Project, published Wednesday. As part of its campaign, the company has also hosted splashy “Screen Smart” events for influencers; some of those people went on to publicly advocate for Meta-backed safety legislation that would make app stores, rather than individual platforms, responsible for verifying users’ ages, according to the report.

Brands commonly partner with influencers to promote new products or initiatives, and Meta says the sponsorships are intended to get more teens using safer settings. But the push comes as Meta faces intense scrutiny regarding the safety of its platforms for young people.

Juries in California and New Mexico found Meta liable for addicting and harming young people following landmark trials this year, although the company has repeatedly said its platforms are safe for teens and it plans to appeal. It also faces hundreds more suits from families, school districts and state attorneys general. Multiple online safety groups released reports last year suggesting that Instagram’s Teen Accounts and other safety tools weren’t functioning as advertised, potentially exposing teens to sexual, violent or other inappropriate content. The company later updated its content restrictions for teens.

Other tech and social media companies have faced similar claims. The Senate Judiciary Committee plans to call Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other social media executives to testify in another hearing about youth safety next month amid a renewed push to pass the Kids Online Safety Act.

Meta has also previously provided funding to organizations including the National Parent Teacher Association, Girl Scouts and Sesame Street to spread the word about its safety tools. The National PTA reportedly cut ties with Meta earlier this year amid the company’s court battles.

Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project, encouraged Instagram users to pay attention to “who’s behind the content.”

“People have learned to pay attention to the fact that, oh, this influencer is pushing these diet pills because they were sponsored,” Paul said. “I don’t think they’re as aware of these less tangible assets like social media, where the influencers are also being sponsored to push that … Rather than trying to sell you a product — because you are the product, your kids are the product — they’re trying to sell you a message which is a sense of safety.”

Meta’s Teen Accounts settings provide default privacy protections, content restrictions and time limit reminders for teen users. Meta also provides control tools for parents.

“We proudly work with parents and creators to spread the word about these controls and encourage people to use them,” Meta spokesperson Nkechi Nneji said in a statement. “Our critics claim to care about safety, but attacking efforts to educate parents proves they are more interested in headlines than actually helping families.”

TikTok, Snap and Roblox have also partnered with parent influencers to promote their safety tools. Paul said Tech Transparency Project’s new report was an extension of its research into Meta’s partnerships with groups such as the PTA.

Garrett told CNN he felt his sponsored post about Meta’s Teen Accounts had helped people, saying that “many friends with kids reached out to share that they had no idea about Meta’s protections for teen accounts until they saw my post.”

“It’s vital that we all come together to navigate these issues and promote a safer online environment for our youth,” Garrett said in an emailed statement. “Partnering with Meta allows me to contribute to this important conversation and advocate for the well-being of our children in the digital landscape.”

Robertson-Huff did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. Meta said that the details in Robertson-Huff and Garrett’s posts were not mandated by the company.

Parents, doctors paid to promote Meta safety features

Meta has hosted “Screen Smart” events across the country, offering influencers — and, in some cases, their families — catered food, interactive activities, access to executives, photo ops and information about the company’s safety features about which they can create content.

Meta has called the events educational workshops that help to get more teens and families using its safety tools. The Tech Transparency Project in its report described them as also being part of a “campaign (by Meta) to counter negative media coverage—and portray itself as dedicated to child safety.”

Meta has also formed paid partnerships with at least a dozen doctors, including pediatricians and psychologists, to attend Screen Smart events and promote its safety features, according to the report.

In one example noted in the report, Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart, a Texas pediatrician, made a sponsored post in November 2024 noting she’d spoken at five Screen Smart events. Earlier that year, she spoke about Teen Accounts and Instagram’s parental control tools in several TV interviews — some, but not all, of which noted that they were “sponsored by Meta.”

Lockhart declined to comment to CNN on her partnership with Meta.

Professional medical organizations have raised concerns about the risks from social media to young people. In 2024, after then-US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for Congress to require a warning label on social media platforms, the American Psychological Association cheered the effort. The American Academy of Pediatrics notes that social media can have potential benefits for teens, such as social connection, but can contribute to loneliness, depression and anxiety.

Sponsored posts promoting Meta’s safety efforts have been viewed nearly 300 million times on Instagram since 2024, the report states, citing the social media analytics platform Zelf. Some influencers have also shared Meta-sponsored content on YouTube and TikTok.

Unlike other brands that also pay influencers to share their messaging, Meta has direct access to the algorithm that could determine how widely its partners’ posts are viewed, Paul said.

“All of this happening on their platforms is different than other ways we’ve seen corporations use influencers,” Paul said, adding that the company could “make sure that if you search Instagram for ‘Instagram Teen Accounts,’ promos from these people are what comes up.”

Paul said that several of the doctors who posted about Teen Accounts saw millions of views on those posts, while their posts typically receive only tens of thousands of views.

Influencers push Meta-backed safety legislation

During at least some of its Screen Smart events, Meta distributed information about a legislative framework that it has backed across the country to require app stores, rather than app operators like Meta, to verify users’ ages. One such law passed in Utah last year but has been challenged in court by a tech trade group.

The report identified several influencers who were paid to attend the Meta events and later went on to advocate for similar legislation, without disclosing their prior relationship with the company.

Meta has argued that requiring age verification at the app store level would provide “a centralized, consistent, and privacy-preserving place for age assurance, rather than requiring every individual app to comply with different rules.” Google and Apple have argued that such a policy creates privacy issues — requiring them to collect sensitive information from all users, even adults who want to use innocuous apps — and that app developers and app stores should share responsibility for age verification.

In one example cited in the report, family influencer Justine Young made a sponsored post about attending a Screen Smart event in San Francisco in 2024. Earlier this year, she wrote an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee saying federal app store age verification legislation would help protect kids online, which does not include any information about her partnership with Meta.

Young told CNN that she was “not compensated in any form” for the op-ed — which spoke broadly about social media and did not mention Meta by name — “so I did not feel the need to disclose that I had any type of relationship with Meta.” She added that her work with paid partners always includes her “honest opinion.”

Influencer Janice Robinson-Celeste, CEO of the Successful Black Parenting magazine, made a sponsored post promoting Teen Accounts and a Screen Smart event in 2024. In March of this year, she wrote a similar op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution advocating for Georgia’s proposed App Store Accountability Act to protect teens from general social media risks, without noting her prior work for Meta.

The magazine said in a statement that neither it nor Robinson-Celeste are “under any contract, agreement, or ongoing paid partnership” with Meta and that the op-ed was her opinion and did not involve any compensation. In exchange for attending the Screen Smart event, Robinson-Celeste received a stipend for travel, lodging and content creation, the group said.

Meta “did not review, approve, or control her content prior to publication, nor dictate the opinions expressed, other than reinforcing that Instagram is intended for users ages 13 and older,” Successful Black Parenting said in the statement.

Meta has also paid college athletes to post about app store age verification legislation. Several such posts include language arguing that social media shouldn’t be entirely banned for young people because it was important to the students’ athletic careers but that app store age verification would protect kids, the report found.

Meta said the partnerships were designed to promote college athletes who share the company’s belief that youth social media bans could harm young people like them.

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