Pinterest Is Telling You to Use It Less — An Odd Position for an Ad Business

Pinterest published a report Tuesday exploring how teens use the app and how its more mindful approach to wellbeing has shaped usage. The Pinterest teen usage data is really an attempt to redefine what kind of platform it is.

"The Best Thing You Can Find Online Is a Reason to Go Offline"

The report expands Pinterest's online discovery, offline engagement push, which frames the platform as a positive contributor to real-life social engagement rather than a time suck designed to keep people scrolling.

As Pinterest put it: "At Pinterest, we believe that 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."

The Usage Numbers

Pinterest says its young users, who are using the app more than ever, seek inspiration from Pins and organize ideas through in-stream saves and searches.

"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 twice the rate of other age groups," Pinterest said. "Because we make it easy to refine your recommendations, teens can shape and reshape their experience as quickly as their interests shift."

The searches are specific. Teen users over-index in art search by 1.26 times compared with other age groups, with key topics including drawing references, anime styles, sketch tutorials, wallpaper and bedroom décor — the app used to source offline projects.

Nudging Teens Off the App During School

To solidify its support structures, Pinterest said it would expand its distraction-free schools nudge to more than 30 countries. Launched in April 2025, the school hours reminders prompt young users to put their devices down during the day, and have been displayed to 4.5 million teens across the U.S., Canada, France, the U.K., Germany and Brazil.

Pinterest is also expanding its (Me)dia Mindfulness resource hub for digital literacy, and launching a trauma-informed wellbeing space called "Protect Your Energy" that connects "patterns of digital consumption to mental, emotional and physical health." It's increasing philanthropic donations to youth mental health projects and planning to help U.S. students connect with mental health resources through their schools.

It Reads as Finger-Pointing at Meta

In many ways the report feels aimed at Meta, currently in the headlines over its perceived failure to protect young users. Pinterest appears to be taking the opportunity to deflect blame for problematic social media usage onto other apps.

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

When an Ad Business Brags About Less Usage

Highlighting that people use the app less — and therefore see fewer ads — is a difficult selling point for a platform reliant on ad revenue. Pinterest clearly believes the angle is worth it anyway.

Flip the logic and it makes sense. Short but purposeful visits can be better ad inventory than long ones. An ad next to someone deciding what to make, buy or try sits closer to intent than an ad interrupting an infinite scroll. And in a tightening regulatory climate, claiming the teen-safety position early is a defense in itself.

The same strategy shows up in Pinterest's nine rising hobby trends: feed-fatigued consumers going hands-on and a platform promising to keep you on it less are one idea. Read next to Meta paying $18B to end its addiction trial and accepting two-hour teen limits, the current moment comes into focus.