‘Built-In Protections for Teens, Peace of Mind for Parents’
Instagram has launched ‘Teen Accounts’, a new update to enhance privacy, mitigate the intrusive effects of social media on minor users, and empower parents to oversee their young child’s online experience.
The platform will reportedly will automatically place teens under 18 into these accounts, offering protections that limit who can contact them and what content they can view. Teens under 16 will now need parental permission to change any settings to be less strict.
Key Features:
Instagram has sought to clarify what changed will now be implemented.
- Private accounts: With default private accounts, teens need to accept new followers and people who don’t follow them can’t see their content or interact with them. This applies to all teens under 16 (including those already on Instagram and those signing up) and teens under 18 when they sign up for the app.
- Messaging restrictions: Teens will now be placed in strict messaging settings and can only be messaged by people they follow or are already connected to.
- Sensitive content restrictions: Teens will automatically be placed into the most restrictive setting of our sensitive content control, which limits the type of sensitive content (such as content that shows people fighting or promotes cosmetic procedures) teens see in places like Explore and Reels.
- Limited interactions: Teens can now only be tagged or mentioned by people they follow. Instagram will also automatically turn on the most restrictive version of our anti-bullying feature, Hidden Words, so that any offensive words and phrases will be filtered out of teens’ comments and DM requests.
- Time limit reminders: Teens will receive notifications informing them to leave the app after 60 minutes each day.
- Sleep mode enabled: Sleep mode will be turned on between 10 PM and 7 AM, which will mute notifications overnight and send auto-replies to DMs.
Parental Supervision:
With Instagram’s new features, parents will now potentially be able to:
- Get insights into who their teens are chatting with
- Set total daily time limits for teens’ Instagram usage
- Block teens from using Instagram for specific time periods
- See topics their teen is looking at
According to Meta, “We plan to place teens into Teen Accounts within 60 days in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, and to start placing them in Teen Accounts in the European Union later this year. Teens around the world will start to get Teen Accounts in January. We’ll also bring Teen Accounts to other Meta platforms next year. These are big updates that will change the Instagram experience for millions of teens, and we need to make sure they work correctly.”
However, while many have praised Meta’s decision to implement improvised safety measures for teens, some have also raised concerns for the potential of over-intrusive control in children’s day-to-day experiences.
