Instagram introduces teen accounts with enhanced safety features

Instagram Teen Accounts were announced Tuesday as the latest effort to keep younger users safe on the Meta-owned photo and video platform. The new teen accounts come with protections that are turned on by default, and only users over the age of 16 can lower the level of security granted to their Instagram account. Parents or guardians can also see who has messaged their teens over a seven-day period and set daily time limits or block the app for a certain duration.

Instagram Teen Accounts Introduced With Default Restrictions

According to Meta, Instagram’s new Teen Accounts will be enabled by default for teens on the platform, forcing them to use private accounts. This means that users under 18 will have to manually approve every person who sends them a follower request.

Instagram only allows teens to receive messages from people they are connected to or accounts they already follow. Likewise, they can only be mentioned or tagged by an account they follow, while the Hidden Words feature filters out unwanted comments from comments and messages.

Parental Controls for Teen Instagram Accounts
Photo credit: Meta

According to the company, sensitive content restrictions, a feature available to all users on Instagram, will be set to the most restrictive setting, with violent videos or videos promoting cosmetic surgery being filtered from the Explore and Reels sections.

By default, sleep mode is enabled between 10pm and 7am, muting notifications and messages. This feature can also be enabled on any account on Instagram. Meanwhile, a reminder will be displayed to teens after they’ve used the app for more than an hour.

Improved parental controls for teen accounts

Parents can also choose to gain more insight into their teens’ time on Instagram through the app’s Supervision feature. It shows who the younger users have messaged in the past week (this includes comments and replies to stories and notes) without showing the actual content of the message.

The service will also give parents an overview of the content topics a teen has chosen on Instagram. Usage timers can also be set on the app, blocking access after a certain time limit. On the other hand, parents can also block Instagram usage for a certain period of time, the company said.

Instagram Teen Account Rollout Timeline

The company say That teens in Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US who sign up for Instagram will now be placed in Teen Accounts, while users under 16 who already have an account will be moved to the new experience next week. Younger users in the EU will be moved to Teen Accounts later this year, with other regions to follow in January 2025.