Instagram announced that it wants to take an important step towards protect young users from the dangers that lurk on the platformimplementing new settings for teen accounts, which will automatically make private millions of accounts of teenagers, as well as limiting the content they can view. This news comes three years after the famous Facebook Papers, which highlighted the risks that the platform represents for young users.
Not only that, the new rules are designed to encourage parental supervision through the app. In fact, the users aged between 13 and 15 years old will be required to obtain parental approval to change their preferred settings within the app. These new settings are based on over 30 parental supervision tools and were designed by parent company Meta.
Of course, despite previous updates, the company has faced a lot of criticism for its handling of teen users. It’s no coincidence that Arturo Bejar, a Facebook employee, said during a Senate subcommittee hearing in November that Meta’s top executives, including CEO Zuckerberg, have completely ignored warnings about the harm to teens on its platforms.
The details of the restrictions
In January, during a Senate hearing, Zuckerberg apologized to the families of teens harmed by social media. The update related to teen accounts will automatically set the profile as private, for users under 18 years of age. Users will only be able to receive messages from people in their contact list, and Instagram will also limit who can tag teens.
Additionally, teen users will also receive time limit reminders that will prompt them to leave the app after one hour a day. The app will also prevent notifications from being received between 10:00 PM and 7:00 AM. There will also be the ability for parents to see which accounts their child has sent messages toas well as being able to set daily time limits for using Instagram, for example preventing it from being used at night or during specific periods.
The changes will roll out to accounts in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia within 60 days, before rolling out to other countries later this year or early 2025. Of course, there is no shortage of doubts: in fact Meta has no way of knowing if it is actually a parent who is monitoring their child’s account, or perhaps an older friend. Meta, after being criticized for not doing enough to keep teens safe, says it is implementing the technology artificial intelligence which will aim to identify teen accounts that may have mistakenly entered an adult birth date.
Finally, Meta says that the new features were developed in consultation with its Security Advisory Council, made up of independent online safety experts and organizations and a group of youth advisors, as well as feedback from other teens, parents, and government officials.
