Instagram is making teen accounts private by default as it tries to make the platform safer for kids amid a growing backlash against how social media affects young people’s lives.
Starting next Tuesday, US, UK, and Australia-based teens who join Instagram will automatically enter a locked-down teen account, and the rest of those already on it will be migrated there over the next sixty days. Accounts of teens in the European Union will be changed later this year.
Meta admitted that teenagers may lie about their age and said it would require them to verify their ages in more instances, such as when they try to create a new account with an adult birthday. The Menlo Park, California-based company said it is also developing technology to identify teen accounts pretending to be adults proactively and automatically include them in the restricted teen accounts.
Private messages on the accounts will be limited, so teens will only receive them from people they follow or are already connected to. Meta said “Sensitive content“, such as videos of people fighting or those promoting cosmetic procedures, will also be limited.
Teens will also be reminded when they spend over 60 minutes scrolling on Instagram. They will enter a “sleep mode” where they will not receive notifications nor send automatic replies to individual messages sent between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.
While these settings would initially be enabled for everyone under 18, 16-—and 17-year-olds would also have the flexibility to turn these features off. Kids under 16 would require their parents’ consent.
And, said the head of product at Meta, Naomi Gleit, what we hear from parents is that their teens are viewing things they don’t want to see, or they’re getting contacted by people they don’t want to be contacted by, or they’re spending too much on the app. So, teen accounts are focused on addressing those three concerns more.
The move follows lawsuits filed by dozens of US states asserting that the company harm young people and contributes to the youth mental health crisis through its design of features on Instagram and Facebook, known to addict children to its platforms.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said Meta’s statement “is an important first step, but much more needs to be done to ensure our kids are protected from the harms of social media”. James’ office said it was meeting with other New York officials to discuss implementing a new state law aimed at curbing the nation’s children’s access to what critics have called addictive social media feeds.
Previously, Meta had criticized its efforts to promote teen safety and mental health on its platforms as not going far enough to change the underlying dynamics of its services. For example, in the case above, children will get a reminder that they have spent an hour scrolling through the app, yet they can just continue scrolling.
It had already panned the measure as insufficient to alter the fundamental dynamics of its services—Meta’s moves to address the safety and well-being of teens on its platforms. For instance, children will receive a notification reminding them that they spent an hour on the app, but they can just close the notice and keep scrolling.
Of course, unless parents of the child turn on “parental supervision” mode that allows parents to restrict teens’ time on Instagram to a specific amount, like 15 minutes. With the new changes, Meta is issuing parents more levers over their children’s accounts.
Those below 16 years will need their parent’s or guardian’s consent before changing their settings to less restrictive ones. This way, they set up “parental supervision” on their accounts and link them to a parent or guardian. Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said last week that parents do not use the parental controls the company introduced in the previous few years.
Gleit said she believes teen accounts will help create a “big incentive for parents and teens to set up parental supervision.” The “parents will be able to see, via the family centre, who is messaging their teen and hopefully have a conversation with their teen,” she said.
“If bullying or harassment is occurring, parents will be able to see who their teen is following, who is following their teen, who their teen has messaged within the past week and maybe even have some of these conversations and help them work their way through these tough situations online here“.
