Meta Launches Teen Accounts on Instagram: Here's What It Offers Compared to Regular Accounts
Meta has launched a teen account on Instagram aimed at teens under 16, which will have additional protections.
In addition to providing greater protection than a personal account that an adult typically has on Instagram, it will also allow parents to be aware of their children's activities when using the said social network.
- What are the functions and limits of a teen's Instagram account?
The functions that Instagram accounts for teens offer are very diverse. What is certain is that their goal is to keep the little ones safe. Some of the functions that they will bring are as follows:
- Set daily time limits for Instagram use : Parents can set the amount of time their children can spend on Instagram each day, and when that time is up, they will no longer be able to stay on the app.
- Prevent teens from using Instagram for a specific period : With the click of a button, parents will be able to prevent their children from using Instagram for a specific period such as at night.
- See who your kids are talking to via direct messages : The teen account will let you see who your child has talked to in the past seven days, but it won't let you see the messages that have been sent.
- Review the topics your child is watching : Parents will be able to see the topics their teen chooses to watch on Instagram.
- Private accounts and restricted messages by default : These accounts will be private and cannot be made public. This way, people who don’t follow them won’t be able to see their content or interact with them, and only those they acknowledge as followers will be able to do so. In contrast, they will only be able to receive messages from people they are already connected to or who follow them.
- Limited interactions : The tagging feature will be limited to people you follow on Instagram. Additionally, it will also have an anti-harassment filter that will filter out words or phrases that may be considered offensive or abusive, and this will apply to both comments and direct messages.
- Strict ban on sensitive content : Content that is dangerous to teens, such as those showing people in a fight or undergoing cosmetic procedures, will be restricted content. In fact, the Meta team explained that these accounts will have the strictest sensitive content filtering settings. If you want to know what content will be filtered, they explain it here .
- Sleep Mode : This mode will be activated on the teen account at 10pm and deactivated at 7am. During that time, notifications will be silenced.
If teens under 16 want to use less protection settings on Instagram, they will need their parents’ permission to do so. The details are that to get permission, teens will have to enable parental supervision.
If you have a child over 16 and want to have more control over their social media activities, you can also do so if you activate the parental control feature. This way, you can approve any changes to the settings regardless of your teen's age.
- When is it scheduled to be released?
As explained in the Facebook blog, these types of accounts will arrive in the United States, England, Canada, and Australia within 60 days. They will arrive in the European Union at the end of 2024, and at the beginning of next year they will be available to the rest of the world. In addition, in the future there will also be accounts for teenagers on the rest of Meta’s platforms.
This move represents a bad change in Meta’s policy regarding how social networks affect teens. We haven’t forgotten how in 2021, the company’s top executives denied, not once, but twice, that their social networks have a harmful effect on teens’ mental health.