FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Jan. 26, 2026
Contact: Ashwin Verghese, Communications Director, [email protected], 508-263-0289
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Fairplay Executive Director Josh Golin made the following statement today:
“These two announcements show that Meta is clearly feeling the pressure from parents, but the changes don’t go nearly far enough.
“Instead of just changing Instagram’s ‘following’ count to a ‘friend’ count, Meta should revive ‘Project Daisy,’ its initiative to hide ‘like’ counts that yielded positive effects for young people’s mental health. Meta knows that visible counts are harmful to young people, but it continues to display them because that helps increase engagement and raise the company’s bottom line. And the new change could actually incentivize young people to follow strangers back in order to up their friend count.
“Meta also needs to answer why it rolled out AI characters for teens before ensuring they were safe. There is widespread documentation of Meta’s AI characters engaging in sexual conversations with young people and talking about suicide and self-harm. It’s good that Meta has recognized its AI characters are unsafe for minors, but that realization should have come before they unleashed this dangerous, powerful technology on kids. And this pause on AI characters should be made permanent. The danger to young people completely outweighs whatever minor good they might do.
“With these announcements, Meta is continuing to try to hold off real accountability with half-measures and good PR. But this company has made it abundantly clear over and over that it cannot be trusted to self-regulate.
“That’s why we need Congress to step in and pass the Kids Online Safety Act — with a duty of care and no preemption of state laws — to force Meta and other Big Tech companies to make their platforms safe for young people. When it comes to children’s safety, Meta cannot be trusted; we need our elected leaders to act.”
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About Fairplay
Fairplay is the leading nonprofit committed to helping children thrive in an increasingly commercialized, screen-obsessed culture, and the only organization dedicated to ending marketing to children. Fairplay works to enhance children’s well-being by eliminating the exploitative and harmful business practices of marketers and Big Tech. Learn more at www.fairplayforkids.org.