Meta is adding parental controls for kids' interactions with artificial intelligence chatbots — including the ability to turn off one-on-one chats with AI characters altogether — beginning early next year.
But parents won't be able to turn off Meta's AI assistant, which Meta says will “will remain available to offer helpful information and educational opportunities, with default, age-appropriate protections in place to help keep teens safe.”
Parents who don't want to turn off all chats with all AI characters will also be able to block specific chatbots. And Meta said Friday that parents will be able to get “insights” about what their kids are chatting about with AI characters — although they won't get access to the full chats.
The changes come as the social media giant faces ongoing criticism over harms to children from its platforms. AI chatbots are also drawing scrutiny over their interactions with children that lawsuits claim have driven some to suicide.
Even so, more than 70% of teens have used AI companions and half use them regularly, according to a recent study from Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that studies and advocates for using screens and digital media sensibly.
On Tuesday, Meta announced that teen accounts on Instagram will be restricted to seeing PG-13 content by default and won’t be able to change their settings without a parent’s permission. This means kids using teen-specific accounts will see photos and videos on Instagram that are similar to what they would see in a PG-13 movie — no sex, drugs or dangerous stunts.
Meta said the PG-13 restrictions will also apply to AI chats.
Children's online advocacy groups, however, are skeptical about Meta's intentions.
“Meta’s new parental controls on Instagram are an insufficient, reactive concession that wouldn’t be necessary if Meta had been proactive about protecting kids in the first place," said James Steyer, Common Sense Media founder and CEO. “On top of this, Meta is taking its sweet time, waiting months to implement this new feature at a pivotal moment where every second counts.”
“For too long, this company has put the relentless pursuit of engagement over our kids’ safety, ignoring warnings from parents, experts, and even its own employees.”
Meta AI chatbots, Steyer added, “are not safe for anyone under 18."
Common Sense Media does not recommend minors use AI chatbots of any kind.
FILE - Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox speaks at LlamaCon 2025, an AI developer conference, in Menlo Park, Calif., April 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — A mass shooting carried out Saturday by multiple suspects in an unlicensed bar near the South African capital left at least 12 people dead, police said. The victims included three children aged 3, 12 and 16.
Another 13 people were wounded and being treated in the hospital. Police didn’t give details of the ages of those who were injured or their conditions.
Police adjusted the death toll after they said a 12th victim died in the hospital.
The shooting happened at a bar inside a hostel in the Saulsville township west of the administrative capital of Pretoria in the early hours of Saturday. Ten of the victims died at the scene and two others died at the hospital, police said.
The children killed were a 3-year-old boy, a 12-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl. Police said they were searching for three male suspects.
“We are told that at least three unknown gunmen entered this hostel where a group of people were drinking and they started randomly shooting,” police spokesperson Brig. Athlenda Mathe told national broadcaster SABC. She said the motive for the killings was not clear. The shootings happened at around 4.15 a.m., she said, but police were only alerted at 6 a.m.
South Africa has one of the highest homicide rates in the world and recorded more than 26,000 homicides in 2024 — an average of more than 70 a day. Firearms are by far the leading cause of death in homicides.
The country of 62 million people has relatively strict gun ownership laws, but many killings are committed with illegal guns, authorities say.
There have been several mass shootings at bars — sometimes called shebeens or taverns in South Africa — in recent years, including one that killed 16 people in the Johannesburg township of Soweto in 2022. On the same day, four people were killed in a mass shooting at a bar in another province.
Mathe said that mass shootings at unlicensed bars were becoming a serious problem and police had shut down more than 11,000 illegal taverns between April and September this year and arrested more than 18,000 people for involvement in illegal liquor sales.
Recent mass killings in South Africa have not been confined to bars, however. Police said 18 people were killed, 15 of them women, in mass shootings minutes apart at two houses on the same road in a rural part of Eastern Cape province in September last year.
Seven men were arrested for those shootings and face multiple charges of murder, while police recovered three AK-style assault rifles they believe were used in the shootings.
AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa
A man sits outside a scene where the bodies of the victims of a mass shooting were found, at a bar near Pretoria, South Africa, Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/STR)
Forensic personnel is seen at a scene where bodies of the victims of a mass shooting where found at a bar near Pretoria, South Africa, Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025. (AP Photo)
Police officers carry the body of a person on a stretcher after a mass shooting at a bar near Pretoria, South Africa, Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025. (AP Photo)
