Instagram is under renewed pressure about its policies around teens, and the scrutiny could affect how advertisers approach the app when it comes to influencer marketing and other brand safety considerations.

On Wednesday, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri testified before a Senate consumer protection subcommittee, where lawmakers asked about the health of teens. For months, lawmakers have been digging into Facebook and Instagram, which now fall under the corporate identity Meta, because of reports about how the platforms impact teen health. In September, this question was one of the biggest issues raised by whistleblower Frances Haugen. Haugen leaked internal reports that suggested Instagram found some at-risk teens felt worse about themselves after using the app.

“Instagram is addictive,” Senator Richard Blumenthal told Mosseri during the hearing, adding that Instagram’s algorithm is designed to keep teens on the site. 

Senators were fired up in their questioning, following more reports this week about the type of content that Instagram could serve teens. On Tuesday, watchdog group Tech Transparency Project claimed that it ran an experiment that found minors could be directed to Instagram accounts of drug peddlers.

While the focus of the hearing was teens, lawmakers also touched on topics that directly impact advertisers. 

Influencer programs

The use of influencers and creators was raised during the hearings, an area that Instagram and Facebook are both investing in aggressively. On Wednesday, in fact, Facebook announced a new program that would pay the most popular creators up to $35,000 a month to make Reels, the short-form videos that are similar to those on TikTok.

Senator Marsha Blackburn asked about popular influencer Jojo Siwa, now 18 years old, who once told Mosseri she had an Instagram account since she was 8 years old.

Mosseri, Blackburn said, told Siwa he “didn’t want to know,” and then the senator asked if that was his general attitude about children sneaking around Instagram’s under-13 age restriction.

“It looked as if you were encouraging kids, who want to be online stars, to get on earlier and to build their audience,” Blackburn said.

“I would say it was a missed opportunity,” Mosseri said, failing to use the conversation with Siwa as a teaching moment.

Siwa was also a popular child star on Nickelodeon, joined YouTube at the age of 13, and was once featured in Ad Age.

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Instagram’s marketing plan

Senator Amy Klobuchar was interested in how Instagram spends its marketing dollars, and she cited a report from October that claimed the majority of the company’s advertising goes to drive growth among teens.

Klobuchar said that Instagram increased its ad spend from $67 million in 2018 to $390 million this year. Instagram’s advertising strategy is an important topic, especially for Publicis Groupe’s Spark Foundry, which recently became the media agency of record for Meta. And now lawmakers are paying attention to how that media strategy plays out.

“Your company viewed losing teen users as quote an ‘existential threat,’” Klobuchar said. “Whereas parents are viewing their kids' addiction to your products and other products as an existential threat.”

“Our kids aren’t cash cows,” Klobuchar said.

Mosseri said that he did not “believe those statistics are correct” regarding Instagram spending the majority of its ad dollars to market to teenagers.

Lawmakers haven’t only spoken with Meta executives in their social media inquiries—TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube have also testified about the impact of their services on teens.

New rules for teens

Instagram took steps ahead of this week’s hearing to adjust its policies around teens. The company launched new parental controls so they can set time limits on their kids’ activity and monitor their usage. Instagram also limited when teens could be tagged in posts and when their Reels videos could be shared publicly within other people’s Reels.

Teen health and safety concerns are already affecting how advertisers view Instagram and other platforms. Last month, Lush Cosmetics announced it would close its Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok accounts. Lush said that it would still use Twitter and YouTube.

“All of the apps are on blast,” said one marketer at a popular brand, who spoke with Ad Age on the condition of anonymity, to discuss the Instagram hearings. Brands are being careful about the new regulatory climate, the marketer said.

Most of the major advertisers work with influencers and within the platforms that cater to teens, and many brands advertise to Gen Z, a generation that is growing older but can be as young as 10 years old.

Lawmakers and Mosseri discussed new regulations that could change how teens access social media. Mosseri advocated for a policy that would register the age of users at the device level, meaning inside the mobile hardware, to prevent inappropriately young users from joining 13-plus apps. Some lawmakers discussed raising that age limit.

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