Meta expands safety features to protect children on Instagram

Meta is rolling out new safety features on Instagram to protect children from harmful content and crack down on adult-managed accounts who might seek to abuse them.

The company announced the introduction of more serious protections for accounts run by adults that primarily feature children. These include both adult-owned accounts sharing content with children under 13 (such as by talent managers or parents) and accounts that regularly publish content featuring kids.

Meta says that although children under 13 are not allowed to create an account on Instagram, their parents or representatives can do that if they add a clear disclaimer in bio that they run the account.

“While these accounts are overwhelmingly used in benign ways, unfortunately there are people who may try to abuse them, leaving sexualized comments under their posts or asking for sexual images in DMs, in clear violation of our rules. Today we’re announcing steps to help prevent this abuse,” Meta announced in a blog post.

Some of the Teen Accounts protections are now extended to these adult-managed accounts, such as “strictest message settings to prevent unwanted messages, and turning on Hidden Words, which filters offensive comments.”

The tech company adds that they wish to prevent “suspicious” adults from potentially finding this content, so they’ll avoid recommending it to them and will hide their comments under such posts.

Another safety feature added to DMs on Teen Accounts is meant to give teens more insight into the accounts they’re messaging with, such as the month and year when the account was created. They will also see new options to view safety tips and block an account if necessary.

Additionally, both users will be able to “block and report” through DMs, making the reporting process easier.

“These new features complement the Safety Notices we show to remind people to be cautious in private messages and to block and report anything that makes them uncomfortable,” Meta said in their blog post.

The company added that in June alone, accounts were blocked around 1 million times, and an additional 1 million were reported after users saw a Safety Notice.

Another Instagram feature, Location Notice, was seen 1 million times, with 1 in 10 tapping on the notice to learn more about the possible steps. Location Notice is designed to protect users from sextortion scammers who lie about their location by notifying users when they might be chatting with someone from a different country.

The company added that its nudity protection feature was turned on by 99% of people – including teens – since its release. Nudity protection is turned on by default for teens to prevent them from seeing explicit content.

Meta says that earlier this year, its teams have removed almost 135,000 Instagram accounts for either leaving sexualized comments or requesting sexual images from adult-managed accounts featuring children under 13. An additional 500,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts, linked to these accounts, were also deleted.

Many social media platforms have introduced strict age restrictions for children — you can find a full list of them here.