Facebook for teens: the privacy settings that matter
How to set up a teen's Facebook and Messenger account safely, from who can see posts to who can send messages and friend requests.
- Use the real birthday so teen protections apply.
- Set future posts to Friends, limit who can find and message them, and review tags.
- Run Facebook's Privacy Checkup together every few months.
Facebook and Messenger are still central to life in the Philippines: family group chats, school announcements, community pages, buy-and-sell groups. Many teens use Messenger even if they spend more time on TikTok or Instagram.
Meta has been extending its Teen Account protections, first built for Instagram, to Facebook and Messenger, with stricter defaults for younger teens. Settings vary by region and change over time, so check them with your teen.
Start with the Privacy Checkup
In Facebook, go to Settings & privacy, Privacy Checkup. It walks through the main settings in plain language. Do it together.
Key settings
Who can see posts
- Future posts: Friends (not Public)
- Limit past posts: changes old public posts to Friends
- Profile details: hide school, hometown, birthday year and contact info from the public
Who can find and contact them
- Who can send friend requests: Friends of friends
- Who can look them up by email or phone number: Only me or Friends
- Search engines: turn off linking to their profile
Tags and timeline
- Review tags before they appear on their profile
- Review posts they're tagged in
Messenger
- Message delivery: set messages from people they don't know to go to message requests, or not be delivered
- Active status: consider turning off, so they don't appear online to everyone
- Disappearing and end-to-end encrypted chats: talk about what they are. See disappearing messages.
Supervision
Meta's Family Center lets parents supervise teen accounts on Facebook, Messenger and Instagram in many regions. Depending on availability, you may be able to see time spent, set time limits and scheduled breaks, and see who they've recently messaged (not message content). Both you and your teen need to agree.
Talk about
- Friend requests from strangers, especially adults or people with few mutual friends
- Scams in Marketplace and buy-and-sell groups. See scams that target kids.
- Fake news shared by relatives. See spotting fake news.
- Pages and groups that push extreme or hateful content
Family group chats
Family group chats are often where children first use Messenger. They're a good place to model respectful messaging, not sharing others' photos without asking, and checking before forwarding.
eGuard sets up screen time, bedtime and app rules on your child's phone and checks that each one is really on. Free for one child.