The wellbeing edit: How teens are using Pinterest differently, by design

At Pinterest, we believe the best thing you can find online is a reason to go offline. As a visual search and discovery platform, people come to find ideas for what they want to do, make and try next. And no one embodies that more than the teens who use Pinterest every day.

We invest constantly in understanding teens: how they experience Pinterest, what they're looking for, and what kind of digital space helps them thrive. Here's what that looks like in practice in 2026.

Pinterest for doing, not scrolling

Designing for quality over time spent

Pinterest is not a social media platform where users get trapped in an endless rabbit hole. Instead, teens tell us they save Pins with a purpose. They log on, find what they're looking for, and log off to go make it happen. Because of this, they spend less time on Pinterest per week than in other digital spaces.

Our research confirms what teens have been telling us directly:

This isn't accidental. When you design for inspiration, something different happens. Teens over-index heavily on active, intentional behaviors: saving content (+64% re-Pins per user), searching for ideas (+44%), and organizing boards (+68%).² They're not endlessly consuming Pinterest. They're using it to get ideas.

What we're doing to keep it that way:

• Expanding our distraction-free schools nudge to 30+ countries. The existing nudge has already reached 4.5M+ teens in the US, Canada, France, the UK, Germany, and Brazil in 2026 and drives 3x the engagement of similar educational campaigns³-encouraging teens to put their phones down during school hours where it matters most.

• Leading the Inspired Internet Pledge collaboration to build a safer, healthier internet for everyone-especially teens. As part of this effort, we're expanding our (Me)dia Mindfulness resource hub to equip teens and adults with the tools to engage, analyze, and act confidently online-and launching Protect Your Energy, a first-of-its-kind, trauma-informed digital wellbeing space that connects patterns of digital consumption to mental, emotional, and physical health.

• Growing the Youth Mental Health Corps to connect students across U.S. schools and community-based organizations with mental health care, media literacy resources, and support navigating online harassment, bullying, and bias.

• Investing 65% of our 2026 strategic philanthropy in youth mental health and emotional wellbeing-including a partnership with the International Society for Transforming Education to establish digital wellbeing task forces across U.S. school districts, uniting teachers, school leaders, and experts in youth mental health and digital citizenship to build the conditions for students to thrive as upstanding members of their digital communities.

Pinterest for your inspiration

Designing digital spaces for trust, not performance

Social connection is vital for teen development, but ask any teenager and they'll tell you that the digital spaces meant to connect them often bring a heavy dose of toxicity instead.

We dug into this with teens directly, and a clear picture emerged. What they want is community-a sense of belonging with people who share their niche interests-and connection with real-life friends who know and appreciate who they are. What they don't want is the broadcast: a megaphone pointed at a semi-anonymous crowd, where the pressure to perform replaces the possibility of belonging.

Teens tell us that Pinterest gets this right.

That difference is by design. Pinterest is a visual search and discovery platform that people use as an alternative to traditional search engines. Unlike social media platforms that optimize for engagement via enragement at any cost, Pinterest is built to deliver inspiration, positivity and safe discovery.

Here's how we've built the space to support it:

• Teen accounts default to private-and are private-only for 13-15 year olds. Teens cannot be found by strangers through people search.

• Messaging is limited to mutual followers, and only followers a teen has explicitly approved can see their profile and boards.

• Comments are off by default for teen users, removing one of the most common vectors for harassment and comparison.

By stripping out the broadcast layer, we've created a space where teens don't have to perform-they can just be.

Pinterest for your self, not your selfie

Supporting teen identity exploration

Teens are constantly grappling with the age-old question: "Who am I? Where do I fit in? Where do I want to go next?" Social media platforms encourage teens to curate an external, highly polished version of themselves to gain approval from others. But as a visual search platform, teens aren't using Pinterest to build a personal brand: they're creating, remixing, and exploring their own identities.

More than 77% of active teen users use the Pinterest Search bar to proactively explore their interests, and teens access their settings and home feed controls at nearly 2x the rate of other age groups.⁴ Because we make it easy to refine your recommendations, teens can shape and reshape their experience as quickly as their interests shift.

When you look at what they're actually searching for and saving, the picture is vivid. While much of the internet pushes teens to focus on their outward appearance, Pinterest is where they go to cultivate their inner worlds:

• Artistic Pursuits: Drawing references, anime styles, sketch tutorials, and photography poses. Teens want to make something; teens overindex in art search by 1.26x vs other age groups.²

• Personal Spaces: Phone wallpapers, bedroom decor and other ways to personalize their daily environments to feel like home are hot topics.

What you don't see leading the charts? Their own appearance. Teens are using Pinterest to learn more about the things they love and want to create, not to curate how they look to others.

By shifting the focus from public validation to personal inspiration, we're giving teens the space they need to grow, dream, and figure out who they want to be on their own terms.

What connects all of this is a simple belief: teens deserve better from the internet. Better than platforms that treat their attention as a resource to be extracted. Better than social spaces that make them feel watched and judged. Better than feeds that reflect someone else's idea of who they should be.

At Pinterest, we're committed to building a platform that earns the trust of teens and their families-one that leaves them more inspired, more connected, and more themselves.

Stay tuned for more, and thank you for being part of the journey.