Meta announced on Tuesday, Sept. 17, Instagram will be rolling out “teen account” settings to help users under the age of 18 stay safe while on the social media app. The company will automatically switch accounts for users under 18 to private and place them under the strictest messaging settings. This means only people the teens are connected to on Instagram can slide into their DMs.
There will be limits on who can tag teens in photos or comments. Teens will also be automatically placed into the app’s most restrictive consent setting. It limits the type of sensitive material teens see in their Reels and Explore pages, content like people fighting or posts promoting cosmetic procedures.
Instagram will also alert teens when they have been scrolling for too long. The app will send them a notification to take a break after using it for 60 minutes each day. Other features will see sleep mode activate between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., which mutes notifications and sends auto-replies to direct messages.
Users under the age of 16 will need a parent’s permission to change these “teen account” settings.
Speaking of parents, Meta is adding updates to its supervision feature including allowing parents to see who their teen messages in a week, set a daily total time limit, block use for specific time periods and see what topics their teen is looking at.
“We developed Teen Accounts with parents and teens in mind,” Meta said in a statement. “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.”
All these updates come as Meta and social media continue to be scrutinized over their impact on teens and kids.
During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg publicly apologized to parents who said their children were harmed by social media use.
“No one should have to go through the things that your families have suffered,” Zuckerberg said at the hearing.
This year, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued an advisory about the effects of social media on youth mental health and wrote an op-ed saying social media needs a surgeon general’s warning label.
In the meantime, the changes to Instagram will roll out to new users starting Tuesday and existing teen users should see their account switch within the next 60 days.
