Instagram Makes Radical Changes Targeting Teens
Meta is introducing a new type of mandatory account for all teens under 16 on Instagram.
The changes come after years of scrutiny over Meta's handling of teen safety across its platforms.
The new “Teen Accounts” add additional parental controls, automatically imposing strict privacy settings on teens that can only be modified with parental approval.
With “teen accounts,” Instagram automatically imposes strict privacy settings on children under 16.
Instagram has made a range of these settings, such as automatically making accounts private, not being able to message strangers and limiting sensitive content, available to teens, though younger teens will now not be able to change these settings without parental approval.
Once a parent sets up supervision tools within Instagram, they can monitor which accounts their kids are messaging with — without parents seeing the contents of those direct messages — as well as the types of topics their kids see posts about in their feeds.
Parents can limit the amount of time their children spend in the app by setting up “sleep mode” — which mutes notifications or makes the app completely inaccessible — or reminders to take a break.
According to Meta, the changes are intended to give parents greater oversight over their teens' experiences.
Since 2022, the company has introduced some parental control features, though they were optional and required teens to opt in to the controls.
“Teen accounts” become mandatory for all teens under the age of 16, and strict settings, such as the ability to make an account public, cannot be modified without parental consent.
The company says it also has a plan to identify teens who lied about their age when creating their Instagram accounts.
Starting next year, the company will use AI to detect signs that an account might belong to a teen, such as the ages of other linked accounts and the ages of accounts they interact with a lot, to find younger users who are trying to avoid the new restrictions, while prompting the user to verify their age.
Meanwhile, Meta is starting to label new accounts created by kids between the ages of 13 and 15 as “teen accounts” starting now.
The company will begin moving existing teens to Teen Accounts over the next two months in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia, with a broad rollout planned for the EU later this year, and Teen Accounts to be available in other countries and across other Meta apps starting in 2025.