As little as I trust Mark, it's a good step in the right direction. Apparently, the new accounts will also apply to any existing users who are under 18.
The key will be how Instagram handles age verification. Obviously they're doing this to help combat litigation going on at the state and federal level. This time of stuff needs to happen across all social media platforms.
Instagram is making a big change to teen accounts
Teenagers will be automatically enrolled in new private accounts, which have stricter content controls and give parents more oversight
By Rocio Fabbro, Quartz Media
UpdatedYesterday
Teens under 16 will require parental permission to change protection settings.
META-owned social media platform Instagram announced new “Teen Accounts” Tuesday, an automatic new feature that will give young people stricter content controls and protections.
Starting Tuesday, Instagram will begin placing teens that sign up for the app under Teen Accounts, which will by default be private accounts, it said. Other safety features include restrictions on who teens will be able to message, sensitive content restrictions, limits on tagging and mentions, and time controls.
Meta has launched a slew of initiatives over the last few years in an effort to protect teens and kids from sexual predators, following reports of rampant child trafficking on its platforms and scrutiny over the impacts of its platforms on youth mental health.
In April, Meta announced a new “nudity protection” feature for direct messages that automatically blurs nudes sent and received by teens under 18 to help protect children from predators.
The company was heavily criticized late last year over its use of encryption technology for Facebook and Instagram direct messages — something insiders said helped predators, not victims.
These latest changes are a step up from past protections, which were opt-in only. Instagram will now require teens to verify their age in multiple places and flag accounts belonging to teens that have set an adult birthday. They will be automatically placed under the “strictest setting of [Instagram’s] sensitive content control,” which in many cases hides sensitive content altogether.
Under the new “Teen Accounts,” users under the age of 16 will need to get a parent’s permission to change any of the built-in protections to be less strict. For teens over 16, parents can turn on a “parental supervision” feature that allows them to change any of their teens’ settings.
Parents will also be able to supervise who their teens are chatting with (but won’t be able to see the messages themselves), set daily time limits, block teens from using the app at certain times, and see topics teens are looking at.
Instagram plans to place teens into Teen Accounts within 60 days in the U.S., UK, Canada and Australia, and in the European Union later this year. Elsewhere, teens will get Teen Accounts in January. Meta plans to bring the feature to its other platforms next year.
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