Instagram introduces private and restricted ‘teen accounts’

Meta property of the social media platform Instagram (META) announced new “Teen Accounts” Tuesday, an automatic new feature that will provide stricter content controls and protections for young people.

Starting Tuesday, Instagram will categorize teens who sign up for the app as Teen Accounts, which will be private accounts by default, it said. Other safety features include limits on who teens can message, restrictions on sensitive content, restrictions on tagging and mentions, and time controls.

Meta has launched a series of initiatives in recent years in an effort to protect teens and children from sexual predators, following reports of widespread child trafficking on its platforms and supervision of the impact of its platforms on the mental health of young people.

In April, Meta announced a new ‘Nudity Protection’ Function for direct messages that automatically blur nude photos sent and received by teens under 18 to protect children from child abusers.

The company was heavily criticized at the end of last year over the use of encryption technology for direct messages on Facebook and Instagram, something insiders say helps predators, not victims.

These latest changes are a step forward of previous protectionsthat were opt-in only. Instagram will now require teens to verify their age in multiple places, and flag accounts belonging to teens who have set an adult birth date. They will automatically be placed under the “strictest setting of[Instagram’s]sensitive content controls,” which in many cases hides sensitive content entirely.

Under the new “Teen Accounts,” users under 16 will need to get parental permission to change built-in protections to make them less restrictive. For teens over 16, parents can enable a “parental controls” feature that lets them change their teen’s settings.

Parents can also monitor who their teens are chatting with (but they can’t see the messages themselves), set daily time limits, block teens from using the app at certain times, and see what topics teens are viewing.

Instagram plans to put teens in Teen Accounts within 60 days in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, and later this year in the European Union. Elsewhere, teens will get Teen Accounts in January. Meta plans to bring the feature to its other platforms next year.