Following parents sharing countless concerns about Instagram and how social media affects younger users, the social network service continues its work to make it safer.
On Tuesday, Meta, Instagram’s parent company, announced teen accounts with built-in privacy restrictions, giving parents more control over who can contact their teenager and the content they see.
According to a news release, the accounts are private by default, and those under 16 will need a parent or guardian to change the setting. Teens who sign up for Instagram will automatically get a new teen account. The company said that existing teenagers’ Instagram accounts will transition to teen accounts within 60 days in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia. European Union teens’ accounts will adjust later this year, and teens worldwide will get teen accounts in January.
In addition to limiting interactions on the platform, teen accounts will notify users after more than 60 minutes on the app. A sleep mode mutes notifications between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.
Naomi Gleit, head of product at Meta, said, “The three concerns we’re hearing from parents are that their teens are seeing content that they don’t want to see or that they’re getting contacted by people they don’t want to be contacted by or that they’re spending too much time on the app,” according to The Associated Press. “So teen accounts is really focused on addressing those three concerns.”
“Parents will be able to see, via the family center, who is messaging their teen and hopefully have a conversation with their teen,” she added. “If there is bullying or harassment happening, parents will have visibility into who their teen’s following, who’s following their teen, who their teen has messaged in the past seven days and hopefully have some of these conversations and help them navigate these really difficult situations online.”
The AP mentioned U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s remark from May 2023 after publishing an advisory on social media and youth mental health that “We’re asking parents to manage a technology that’s rapidly evolving that fundamentally changes how their kids think about themselves, how they build friendships, how they experience the world — and technology, by the way, that prior generations never had to manage.”
In January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized to parents during a Senate online child safety hearing who said Instagram contributed to their children’s suicides or exploitation, NBC News reported.
“I’m sorry for everything you’ve all gone through,” Zuckerberg said. “It’s terrible. No one should have to go through the things that your families have suffered.”
“This is why we invest so much and are going to continue doing industry-leading efforts to make sure that no one has to go through the types of things that your families have had to suffer,” he continued.
With its announcement of teen accounts, Meta said it would bring them to other platforms next year.
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