Instagram is placing all teens into accounts with “built-in” protections and those under 16 will need parents’ permission to change these new settings to be less strict.
Meta said teenage accounts will limit who can contact teens and the content they see to “better support parents” and “give them peace of mind” that their kids are safe online.
Teen posts will also be set to private, which means non-followers will not see them and new followers will have to be approved.
New privacy settings will be turned on by default for all teens. Teenagers 16 and older will be able to turn off the automatic protections, but those aged 13 to 15 will need to set up parental supervision to ask their parents for permission to change the settings.
Instagram requires everyone to be at least 13 years old before they can create an account. Meta has acknowledged that “teens may lie about their age” and said it is working on a tool to “proactively find accounts belonging to teens.”
Meta said that the new teen account protections “are designed to address parents’ biggest concerns, including who their teens are talking to online, the content they're seeing and whether their time is being well spent.”
Instagram will place teens who sign up for Instagram into teen accounts starting Tuesday (September 17th), while existing users will be moved to teen accounts starting next week.
Meta said it plans to place all teens into teen accounts within 60 days in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia, followed by the EU later this year. Teens elsewhere will start getting teen accounts in January.
“These are big updates that will change the Instagram experience for millions of teens, and we need to make sure they work correctly,” Meta said.
Why are stricter rules being enforced?
The announcement comes as social media companies face increasing pressure to do more to protect children from harmful content.
Dozens of US states have sued Meta accusing the company of fueling a youth mental health crisis by making their social media platforms addictive. In the EU, Meta was put under investigation for potential breaches of the bloc’s online content rules relating to child safety.
Meanwhile, the Australian government announced last week that it was planning to ask parliament to vote on a bill that would raise the age kids can access social media. It is yet to decide on the exact age, but it is likely to be set somewhere between 14 and 16.
Also last week, Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said that parents don’t use dozens of child safety tools the company had introduced in recent years. He said there was a “behavioral issue” around using the tools after saying parents ignored them.
What will change?
In addition to enforcing private accounts to all teens by default, Instagram will also place teenagers in the strictest messaging settings, so they can only be messaged by people they follow or are already connected to.
Sensitive content, such as people fighting or material promoting cosmetic procedures, will be restricted for teens, and interactions with other users limited – only people they follow will be able to tag or mention them.
Instagram will also send notifications to teenage users telling them to leave the app after 60 minutes each day. Additionally, sleep mode will be turned on between 10 PM and 7 AM, which will mute notifications overnight and send auto-replies to DMs.
Meanwhile, parents will be offered more options to get involved in their kids' online experiences. While parents can’t read their teen’s messages, they will be able to see who they messaged in the past seven days.
Parents will also be able to set daily time limits for their kids’ Instagram usage, block them from using Instagram for specific time periods, and see topics their teen is looking at.
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