Instagram introduces Teen Accounts to protect younger users and give parents more control

Instagram has introduced new restrictions and protections with Instagram Teen Accounts which is designed to keep young users safe and offer parents peace of mind.

Teenage users will automatically be placed into teen accounts while teens under 16 will need parental permission to change any of the stricter settings.

Instagram Teen Accounts is designed to moderate what a young user sees on the platform, who they interact with and how long they can spend looking at the app every day.

Recently the government has been talking about restricting social media access to children under a certain age.

This measure by Instagram isn’t quite the same but more about moderating usage, creating responsible habits about the platform and bringing parents into play to give them more power to protect their child.

“Many months in the making, today we launch Teen Accounts on Instagram, which will automatically place teens into built-in protections and reassure parents that teens are having safe experiences on our app,” says Will Easton, Meta Managing Director, Australia.

“Instagram Teen Account protections are designed to address the biggest concerns of parents, including who their teens are interacting with online, the content they’re seeing, and whether their time is being well spent.

“Some of the new features to start rolling out will include daily time limits, private accounts, stricter messaging restrictions, sensitive content restrictions and sleep mode.

“While Teen Accounts put new protections in place automatically, many parents want to be more involved in their teen’s experiences, so we’re also adding updates to our supervision feature.

“This new experience, guided by parents, will help many feel more controlled and confident regarding their teenager’s activity on Instagram.

“We know parents want to feel confident that their teens can use social media to connect with their friends and explore their interests, without having to worry about unsafe or inappropriate experiences.”

Part of the built in protections of Instagram Teen Accounts include making the account private which means the user has to accept new followers while people who don’t follow them will be unable to see their content or interact with them.

On the messaging side, Instagram Teen Accounts will only allow messaging among people they follow or who they are already connected to.

Part of the protection of Instagram Teen Accounts is having more stringent content restrictions to limit their exposure to sensitive content including violence and anyone promoting cosmetic procedures.

Interactions will also be limited with Instagram Teen Accounts which means they can only be tagged or mentioned by people they already follow.

Instagram will also activate the strongest version of its anti-bullying feature, Hidden Words, which sees offensive words and phrases filtered out of comments and direct message requests.

There will also be a time limit placed on teen users who will receive a notification to leave the app after 60 minutes every day.

Another important update will be Sleep Mode which is active between 10pm and 7am. During that time notifications will be muted and any direct messages will receive automatic replies.

“We’re very pleased to see Meta taking the lead on this critical issue in terms of protecting young people online, particularly around the very real issues relating to body image,” says Jim Hungerford, CEO, Butterfly Foundation.

“Meta is driving platform safety innovations to protect young people’s mental health, importantly involving parents or other carers where appropriate.

“We have many concerns that social media platforms and government need to address with urgency, including accurate age assurance, algorithm control and legislative changes.

“However, we can’t afford to let perfection get in the way of progress to address the harms to young people on social media, and every action to prevent them being exposed to problematic content, like this excellent Meta’s Teens Account initiative, is a step in the right direction.”