Instagram brings in ‘teen accounts’ to give parents greater control
Meta is putting Instagram users under the age of 18 into new “teen accounts” to allow parents greater control over their activities, including the ability to block children from viewing the app at night.
The change will apply to new teenage users but will also be extended to existing accounts held by teenagers over the next few months.
Changes under the teen account setting include giving parents the ability to set daily time limits for using the app, block teens from using Instagram at certain times, see the accounts their child is exchanging messages with and being shown the content categories they are viewing.
Teenagers signing up to Instagram are already placed by default into the strictest privacy settings, which include barring adults from messaging teens who don’t follow them and muting notifications at night.
Under the new “teen account” feature, users under the age of 16 will need parental permission to change those settings, while 16- to 18-yearolds defaulted into the new features will be able to change them independently. Once an under-16 tries to change their settings, the parental supervision features will allow adults to set new time limits, block access at night and view who their child is exchanging messages with.
Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said: “This [change] really tries to very meaningfully shift the balance in favour of parents by basically putting teens into the strictest default settings over what content they see.”
Ian Russell, a prominent internet safety campaigner, said he hoped the announcement was a “turning point” for Meta but warned that previous safety changes had not produced meaningful results.
The father of Molly Russell, who killed herself in 2017 after viewing large amounts of content related to suicide, depression, self-harm and anxiety on Instagram, said it had announced a crackdown on self-harm content in 2019 when Molly’s story went public. A report found such material was still being found on the platform four years later.