On Tuesday, a new initiative was unveiled aimed at enhancing the safety and security of younger users on Instagram, a platform owned by Meta. The introduction of Teen Accounts is designed with built-in protections that are automatically enabled for users in this age group. Only individuals aged 16 and older can choose to lessen these safety measures. In addition, parents or guardians will have visibility into who is messaging their teenage children over the course of a week, with the capacity to set daily app usage limits or restrict access for specific periods.
The Teen Accounts on Instagram will automatically apply default restrictions for users, which includes the necessity to maintain private profiles. Thus, anyone under 18 will need to manually accept every follow request they receive. Furthermore, teenagers will only be able to obtain messages from the people they are linked to or are connected with, while interactions such as mentions or tags will be limited to accounts they already follow. The Hidden Words function helps screen out inappropriate comments both in posts and direct messages.
According to Meta, the new accounts will have settings that limit access to sensitive content, filtering out violent materials and promotions of certain procedures from sections like Explore and Reels. Designed for user well-being, sleep mode will be activated as a standard setting from 10 in the evening to 7 in the morning, silencing notifications during this interval. Additionally, a prompt will remind teenagers to take a break if they invest more than sixty minutes engaging with the application.
For parents, a supervision feature will provide insights into their child’s Instagram activities, including who they have messaged throughout the week, although without revealing any actual message content. This tool also gives an overview of topics that interest the teenager on Instagram. Parents can establish timers to limit app access after a predetermined amount of time, along with the ability to enforce restrictions during specific hours.
The rollout of Teen Accounts is currently active for teenagers signing up in countries such as Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US. Existing users under 16 will transition to these new accounts in the following week. Meanwhile, younger users located in the EU will be updated to Teen Accounts later this year, with additional regions anticipated to follow suit in January 2025.