Sentinel Digital Desk
Instagram will introduce "Teen Accounts" with stronger privacy settings and parental controls for all users under the age of 18, Meta announced Tuesday. The measure seeks to address growing concerns about youth safety and well-being on social media platforms.
• All new and existing accounts created by users under the age of 18 will be set to private by default.
• Teens will not get notifications between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.
• Sensitive content, such as nudity or suggestions of self-harm, will be restricted.
• The app will block direct communications from users they do not follow.
• A new feature will allow teens to decide what content and themes they want to see more of.
Some teenagers may attempt to avoid the privacy rules by creating new Instagram profiles with birth dates that make them appear like adults. The app stated that it will ask those teenagers to verify their ages in a variety of methods, including providing a video selfie for age-estimation analysis.
Instagram stated that account holders aged 16 or 17 can make their accounts public and adjust other default settings on their own. However, teenagers under the age of 16 will require parental permission to change the privacy default, sleep mode, and other limitations.
A family must set up the parental monitoring tool if a teen under 16 want to update their account settings with parental consent. The application also allows parents to view how much time their teenager spends on Instagram, set daily time limits, and block their teen from using Instagram during specific times.
New features on the supervision tool will allow parents to see a list of persons their teenager has recently messaged, as well as content that their child has chosen to see more often.