Instagram announces “creating accounts for the protection of teenagers, providing peace of mind for parents”

Instagram Creates New Teen Account With Restrictions and More Parental Controls

The social network Instagram has released a statement on Tuesday explaining Instagram teen accounts, a new experience for teens controlled by their parents. Teen accounts have built-in protections that limit who can contact them and the content they see. In addition, they provide teens with new ways to explore their interests. We will automatically implement teen accounts for all of them. Those under 16 will need a parent’s permission to change the settings and make them more flexible.

Instagram redesigned the experiences within the Instagram platform so that parents can have peace of mind that their teens will be able to use social media to connect with their friends and explore their interests without having to worry about inappropriate or dangerous experiences.

According to Meta, in a statement some of the new restrictions are these protections are automatically activated and parents decide if their children under 16 can adjust the settings to be less strict:

• Private accounts: With accounts set to private by default, teens must accept new followers, and people who don’t follow them can’t see their content or interact with them.
• Message restrictions: Teens will have the strictest message settings turned on. This way, they can only receive messages from people they follow or people they’re already connected to.
• Sensitive content restrictions: Teens will have the strictest settings of our sensitive content control turned on, which limits the type of sensitive content (such as that which shows people fighting or promotes cosmetic surgery) they can see in sections like “Explore” or “Reels.”
• Limited interactions: Only people who follow teens can tag or mention them. We also automatically turn on the most restrictive version of hidden words, our anti-bullying feature. This way, offensive words or phrases are filtered out of teens’ comments and DM requests.
• Daily Limit Reminders: Teens will receive notifications warning them to log out of the app if they spend more than 60 minutes using it in a day.
• Wind Down Mode On: Wind Down Mode will be turned on between 10pm and 7am. This will silence notifications overnight and send automatic replies to DMs.
  
  When will these changes roll out?

We plan to make teens have teen accounts within 60 days in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia, and the EU by the end of the year. Teens around the world will have teen accounts in January. We’ll also be rolling them out to Meta’s other platforms next year. These are major updates that will change the Instagram experience for millions of teens, and we need to make sure they work properly.

Written by: Oscar El Blue

Instagram creates a new account for teenagers with restrictions and more parental controls.