Social media giant Meta recently launched Instagram Teen Accounts in an effort to provide better protection for teenagers against inappropriate experiences online.
The new feature offers parents a chance to decide what their kids see and who can contact them, giving them peace of mind that their teens are safe online.
Instagram partnered with influencer Jazmine Estrada for the launch to make it more appealing to the younger generation.
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Teenagers' prevalent use of social media has long been contested and argued to be harmful.
In 2022, a study by The National Library of Medicine found that the effects of social media on children and adolescents resulted in problems with sleep, addiction, anxiety, sex-related issues, behavioral problems, and more.
"The new Teen Account protections are designed to address parents’ biggest concerns, including who their teens are talking to online, the content they’re seeing, and whether their time is being well spent,” Meta said in a statement.
The launch of Teen Accounts follows the introduction of “Limits”, a tool that protects teens from unwanted interactions.
Word of the week: Instagram Teen Account.
— Meta Newsroom (@MetaNewsroom) September 17, 2024
Now on @instagram, teens will automatically be placed into more protective settings to reassure parents that teens are having safe experiences. pic.twitter.com/dOhKy8HqzF
The new protections will automatically be turned on, which include:
- Teen Accounts are set to private upon signup.
- Only people who they follow or are connected to can message them.
- The strictest setting of Instagram’s sensitive content control will be applied, limiting the type of sensitive content seen in places like Explore and Reels.
- Hidden Words, the most restrictive version of Instagram’s anti-bullying feature, will automatically be applied to teen accounts, filtering offensive words and phrases from comments and direct message (DM) requests.
- A limit of 60 minutes per day will be applied to teen accounts, and teens will receive a notification telling them to leave the app when the hour's up.
- Notifications will be muted overnight, and the app will enter “sleep mode” between 10 p.m. and 7 p.m.
The launch of Instagram Teen Accounts is a great way for Meta to show that it cares about the safety of its billions of users, which reinforces a positive image and strengthens its corporate branding.
Tailored Safeguards for Different Developmental Stages
Rachel Rodgers, PhD Associate Professor of Applied Psychology at Northeastern University, said in a press release that Instagram Teen Accounts underscore the importance of tailoring teens' online experiences to their developmental stages.
“Younger adolescents are more vulnerable as their skills are still emerging and require additional safeguards and protection. Overall, the settings are age-specific, with younger and older teens being offered different protections.”
Meta will also add its Parental Supervision feature into the mix for parents who want to be even more involved in their teen’s experiences, which will:
- Provide insights into who teens are speaking with while keeping the conversations private.
- Enable parents to block usage during specific times and set daily limits.
- Allow parents to view age-appropriate topics chosen by their teens.
Parental supervision lets parents see how their teens spend their time, who they interact with and get resources from experts. pic.twitter.com/izEiVKvKYd
— Meta Newsroom (@MetaNewsroom) September 12, 2024
Despite these safeguards, some teens might lie about their age, which is why Meta now requires young users to verify their age to sign up, asking for an ID and for others to vouch for their age.
The tech giant also partnered with Yoti, which specializes in privacy-preserving ways to verify age via facial age estimation, a secure age-checking service.
The technology is now being used in Europe, Mexico, Canada, South Korea, Australia, and Japan. Testing in the U.S. is expected to start in 2025.
Meta will place teens who signed up for Instagram into Teen Accounts within 60 days in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia. Placements in the European Union will be done later this year, while other countries will start in January.
Other social media apps have also begun implementing more secure measures for their users’ safety. Messaging platform Telegram started verifying its nearly one billion users this month.
