Instagram has tightened its child safety rules after years of complaints from parents, threats of new regulations, and investigations by Congressional leaders. To that end, Instagram’s parent company Meta introduced its new “Teen Accounts,” which it says will “reassure parents that teens are having safe experiences with built-in protections on automatically.”
Teen Accounts, said Instagram, will limit who can contact teens and the content they see, and help ensure teens’ time is well spent. Teens under 16 will now need a parent’s permission to change any of the built-in protections to be less strict within Teen Accounts.
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Instagram will automatically place teens into Teen Accounts, and teens under 16 will need a parent’s permission to change any of these settings to be less strict.
From now on, Teens under 16 will need their parent’s permission to use less protective settings. To get permission, teens will need to set up parental supervision on Instagram. If parents want more oversight over their older teen’s (16+) experiences, they simply have to turn on parental supervision. Then, they can approve any changes to these settings, irrespective of their teen’s age.
Once supervision is established, parents can approve and deny their teens’ requests to change settings or allow teens to manage their settings themselves. Soon, parents will also be able to change these settings directly to be more protective.
“We’re introducing Teen Accounts to give teens automatic safe protections and parents more peace of mind,” said the head of Instagram Adam Mosseri on Threads, Meta’s messaging service. “Designed based on parents’ biggest concerns, Teen Accounts will automatically apply our strictest settings around who can contact teens and the content they see. Teens under 16 won’t be able to change these settings to be less strict without a parent’s permission. This is a significant change to Instagram and it’s one that I’m personally very proud of.”
The move comes after back in January, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced new plans to help deal with the problems underage users have when using its social media platforms. The company now restricts interactions with users under the age of 19; however, many might say that this is “too little too late” and the move will not put a stop to the many lawsuits brought against Meta for damage that was already done.
Instagram is also now implementing its new supervision feature which includes the following services for parents to protect their teenage children.
Get insights into who their teens are chatting with: While parents can’t read their teen’s messages, now they will be able to see who their teen has messaged in the past seven days.
Set total daily time limits for teens’ Instagram usage: Parents can decide how much time their teen can spend on Instagram each day. Once a teen hits that limit, they’ll no longer be able to access the app.
Block teens from using Instagram for specific time periods: Parents can choose to block their teens from using Instagram at night, or specific time periods, with one easy button.
See topics your teen is looking at: Parents can view the age-appropriate topics their teen has chosen to see content from, based on their interests.
