Meta is paying Indian actors and parenting bloggers to sell its Teen Accounts as the alternative to under-16 social media bans, and the actor fronting the campaign kept his own twins off it until age 16, according to Rest of World. Hiten Tejwani, who shot his June reel after a Zoom briefing from Meta staff, told 732,000 followers that “Instagram is okay” and was paid an amount he would not disclose. Blogger Snehaalata Shah said an agency handed her a brief instructing her to work the features into the middle of her script, then edited what she wrote. What the reels promote does not always function, since a November 2025 review by a Meta whistleblower and child safety groups tested 47 teen safety features and found 64% of them broken, missing, or ineffective.
