This study reveals a critical paradox in social media privacy communication: Although platforms like Meta (Instagram and Facebook), TikTok, and X have evolved their policies in an effort towards simpler, standardized disclosures, the language remains cognitively inaccessible to their core adolescent audience. Our analysis demonstrates that these disclosures, benchmarked against the developmental norms of 13–17-year-olds, are written at a university-level complexity, calling into question the validity of informed consent for minors. We use a triangulated method to assess the accessibility of platform policies for teens. Structural mapping shows consistent topic coverage, but readability indices indicate a college-level reading requirement. Lexical analysis confirms high rates of difficult words, exceeding the threshold for adolescent understanding. Our findings lead to a sobering conclusion: The prevailing model of using a single, text-based privacy policy is caught in an inherent tension between legal completeness and adolescent comprehension, making it fundamentally unworkable. This research provides evidence that calls for the need for a redesign of privacy communication for minors or a reconsideration of the current minimum age for digital consent.
Muguiro et al. (Thu,) studied this question.