Instagram says Take a Break reached just 1.8% of teens: fresh court testimony undercuts safety claims

Instagram’s in-app “Take a Break” feature is getting another hard look in federal court. Testifying in Oakland, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said the reminder tool had a “disappointingly low” usage rate before Meta switched it on by default for teen accounts in September 2024, almost three years after rolling it out in December 2021.

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Court exhibits showed just 1.8% of teens were actually using the feature to step away after long scrolling sessions. That cuts against Meta’s 2021 claim that more than 90% of teens left it turned on, since that number applied only to the much smaller group who had activated it in the first place. Mosseri said in court that the low overall adoption rate was never disclosed. Other testimony described the feature as “designed to fail.” Researchers added that safety tools often see very little real-world use, and a 2025 report found that only 8 of 47 protections tested worked fully.

For anyone tracking Meta’s claims about teen safety, prosecutors now have a very clean argument to make: the feature was there, but hardly any teens were using it.

Instagram’s “Take a Break” is available inside the Instagram app, and teen protections are now turned on by default for teen accounts.

Author: Alijah Raechel Nuestro

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