America is banning more and more kids from social media. That's bad news for kids.

Getty Images; Alyssa Powell/BI

Last fall, teens younger than 18 who logged into Instagram last fall were met with a PG-13-like shroud on their feeds. No longer could they follow accounts that regularly share what Meta deemed "age-inappropriate content" or search for terms like gore and alcohol. To opt out of these automatically applied guardrails, they'd need their parents to grant permission through a connected account. The move was an expansion of Instagram's efforts to give parents more control over teens' accounts.