What teens really worry about online today

The whole notion of online safety has undergone a dramatic transformation in recent years. Where once parents and educators worried primarily about “stranger danger” or explicit online predators, young people today are navigating a far more complex environment. Concerns now range from the endless pressures of comparison culture, fuelled by filters and image editing, to the growing sophistication of peer-to-peer scams and the almost overwhelming wave of AI-generated misinformation.

Recently, Ailís Daly, Head of Trust & Safety for EMEA at WebPurify, an IntouchCX company, sat down with Ursula Sela, Head of Content at luna app, a female-founded community platform designed specifically for girls and non-binary teens, aged 11 to 18, offering trusted, expert advice on everything from mental health and periods to skincare and friendship. Ursula says that the baseline of teen worries in recent years has shifted from the “classic” safety issues to subtler but equally harmful pressures.

“It’s not that today’s pressures are completely new, it’s the intensity that’s changed,” she explains. “Teens now have access to so much information, and that’s created a shift from the general puberty concerns we remember, to demands for absolute perfection. Instead of asking ‘What do I do about spots?’ they’re often asking ‘How can I get glass skin by next week?’ Of course we see the general queries too, but the increase from what we remember growing up is stark.”

“They’re micromanaging their appearance, influenced by endless micro-trends like glow-ups, looks-maxxing, waist trainers and other beauty hacks. Filters and comparison culture distort what’s normal, and that’s something we’ve had to address directly on luna. We hear questions like, ‘Can I fix my asymmetrical face?’ after using an inverted filter, or even ‘Will bee pollen make my breasts grow?’ because of a viral social media shop video.

“Teens aren’t just curious anymore. They’re overwhelmed, trying to figure out what’s real and what isn’t, on top of all the usual questions they may have about growing up.”

When beauty hacks become misinformation

For many teens, the online world has become a mirror that reflects, and often distorts, their sense of self. What might once have been occasional worries about image or appearance are now a daily concern, magnified by the constant churn of photos, videos, and likes. At the same time, teens and parents are also grappling with the rise of digital misinformation, much of it disguised as harmless beauty or wellness advice.

Ursula explains that parents and teens approach misinformation very differently. “Parents are worried about what their teens are seeing and accessing, but often don’t want to create too much of a surveillance culture to maintain trust and connection,” she says.

Teens, meanwhile, often don’t even realize that the advice or content they’re consuming could be misleading. In luna’s user testing, this has revealed a worrying gap in media literacy. “So many teens don’t know what misinformation looks like, or what it even is,” she notes. When luna polled girls aged 11 to 18, more than half (55%) admitted they had followed social media advice – like facial icing – without knowing if it was legitimate.

From there, she outlines three main areas of concern. The first is body-altering filters and content that normalizes toxic beauty ideals. Filters like the “chubby filter,” designed to ridicule natural body types, or hashtags such as “#skinnytok,” which promotes extreme thinness, and can distort perceptions of what’s normal. “Teens are constantly comparing themselves not only to filtered versions of others, but filtered versions of themselves,” she warns.

Another concern is what Ursula calls “hack culture,” where extreme or pseudoscientific advice circulates widely online. She points to questions that luna regularly receives: can bee pollen make breasts grow? Will drinking salt water help with weight loss? Can lime juice delay a period?

“For every girl who is aware of luna and knows to ask us these questions, you have to wonder how many others are trying these things without realising they’re unsafe,” she says.

This endless cycle of comparison doesn’t just affect self-esteem; it also conditions behavior. Teens feel pressure to edit their images, to adopt the latest trends, and to measure themselves against an unattainable digital ideal. The presence of filters means that reality and fiction blur, and the standard of what looks “normal” becomes increasingly skewed.

And this trend has serious mental health consequences, as research has shown links between social media use and rising levels of anxiety and depression in young people. Platforms that were once seen as neutral communication tools now serve as engines of social pressure, particularly around body image and identity.

The intensity of information & decision overload

A large part of the issue, Ursula explains, is the sheer intensity of online information. Where older generations might log on to check messages once a day, today’s teens live in a perpetual flow of urgent messaging and new trends. Every interaction is immediate, and every response is expected quickly.

This kind of digital saturation creates fertile ground for risky behavior. When teens are bombarded with prompts to click, share, or respond, they often do so without pausing to evaluate. That’s precisely how scams spread.

And this sentiment is echoed by teenagers themselves. Siún, a 14 year old student we interviewed, explains how they typically work. She recalls a fake promotion for a popular beauty brand, Sol de Janeiro, recently circulated in her network: “The ad said you could get a free product if you shared the link with five people and took a quiz. Then it asked for your address. I knew it was a scam, though, because the number of free products shown on the page kept changing. But lots of my friends were sharing it around.”

The fact that this scam circulated so widely among her peers highlights how decision overload can weaken critical thinking. Even when teens know to be cautious, the speed of information means they sometimes suspend disbelief in the moment.

Siún says she rarely assumes that platforms have her safety completely covered. “Normally I’m in a rush to get the information and click accept on cookies or privacy settings without much thought,” she admits. “But if a platform needs access to my data or gallery, I’ll decline unless it’s an app I know is safe or have been told is safe by family and friends.”

The looming challenge of AI-generated content

If scams and misinformation spread quickly now, the arrival of AI-generated content magnifies the challenge further. Deepfakes, fabricated images, and synthetic text blur the already shaky line between reality and fiction. Teens now face an environment where almost nothing can be taken at face value.

“AI is not necessarily a force for bad, but teens are often turning to free AI tools for quick advice on things like diet, skincare, or workouts,” Ursula says. “Unfortunately, the answers they get aren’t always accurate, safe, or age-appropriate.”

The problem, Ursula explains, is that these tools often don’t provide the full context needed to use such advice safely, and much depends on how a tool is prompted or trained. If a teen types in something like, ‘How do I lose weight in three weeks?’, the response they receive may sound convincing, or may be more suitable for an adult, but it isn’t necessarily trustworthy for a young person.

Too often, the tools reinforce what a teen wants to hear – they’re sycophantic by nature – rather than giving them what they actually need to hear.

“That’s a real concern, and in our own testing – comparing how luna answers teen questions and the largest free AI chatbot on the market – we’ve seen this difference clearly,” she says. “There’s a huge gap between a medically verified response tailored for a teenage audience and a generic AI answer that simply echoes back their fears or desires, telling them what they want to hear and not what they need to hear.”

For teens, who are still developing critical thinking skills and personal identity, this environment can be disorienting.

Building digital literacy – and giving teens a break

At luna, the solution isn’t to make teens fearful of everything they see online, but to help them pause, question, and build critical thinking habits. “We help teens slow down and think twice before trusting what they see online,” she explains. “Where is this advice coming from? Is it safe? Is it backed by evidence? We’re not trying to create health anxiety, just to build a habit of questioning and verifying.”

On luna, that means showing young people what verified advice actually looks like, pointing them towards trusted sources like medical journals. “Don’t just say, ‘Don’t trust that.’ Show them what to trust,” Ursula says.

Giving teens a tool that they can trust and want to use, like luna, can be transformative: while 55% of girls using luna initially admitted to following unverified social media advice, after four weeks on the app only 2% said they would do so again.

That kind of shift highlights how small interventions in digital literacy can have a major impact.

“Sometimes”, Ursula notes, “It’s as simple as pointing out that a popular hack isn’t safe. Other times, it’s about reminding teens that questioning advice is healthy and normal.”

When asked what she would change if she could wave a magic wand, Ursula’s answer was: the tone of the internet itself. “I’d change the way the internet talks to teen girls, telling them who to be, how to look, what to fix,” she says.

“Advice isn’t the problem; it’s how the advice is packaged. I want people on the internet to be warmer, to put less pressure and perfection on everything, and to stop trying to sell girls so many quick fixes and unsafe solutions rather than actually helping.”

That philosophy runs through luna’s approach. The platform doesn’t just provide advice; it packages it in a way that feels safe, supportive, and human. “We’re like big sisters,” Ursula explained. “We meet teens where they are, and we don’t overwhelm them with algorithms telling them who to be or information they may not be ready for – we have a pull, not a push approach. We’re there to be a helping hand, as a co-pilot to parents, with the goal to empower them and just to help them be teenagers who can take charge of their health and wellbeing.”