Instagram announced New restrictions on teen accounts on Tuesday amid growing controversy over safety rules for young users on the social media platform.
The photo-sharing app will soon restrict teen content using rules similar to those the film industry uses for PG-13 films. The changes will mean the app hides or discourages posts that contain profanity, display drug paraphernalia or encourage “potentially harmful behavior.” Instagramowned by Meta, said.
The company said it would use “age prediction technology” to ensure teenagers can't escape the restrictions that will be introduced by the end of the year.
Read more: Instagram has promised to become safer for teenagers. Researchers say it doesn't work.
The changes come amid criticism of Instagram for allegedly failing to protect minor users from harmful content. Last week's report published exclusively in TIME suggested that nearly three in five teens aged 13 to 15 have been exposed to unsafe content and unwanted messages in the past six months. Mehta told TIME that the report is “deeply subjective” and “based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how our teen safety tools work.”
And in September, a separate study by online safety groups and Northeastern University researchers found that more than 40 child safety features promised by Instagram were flawed. Meta called this study “It is dangerous to mislead.»
“Age inappropriate content”
Last year, the company made efforts to strengthen protections for young users when it launched “teen accounts” that prevented people under 18 from accessing certain adult content and automatically set their accounts to private by default.
The new changes will block teen users from following accounts that post “age-inappropriate content or if their name or bio suggests the account is inappropriate for teens,” Instagram said in a statement. Teens who already follow these accounts will not be able to see or interact with their content, and these accounts will also not be able to follow, message, or comment on teens' posts. Restrictions will apply to celebrities and other actively followed adult accounts that make at least one age-inappropriate post. said NBC News.
Instagram's AI chatbot will also see new fixes that will prevent it from giving users age-inappropriate answers. Additionally, AI chatbots and the companies behind them have also been the target of lawsuits over allegations that chatbots help users “Learn suicide methods.
Instagram's new restrictions will automatically apply to teenage users. They will not be able to refuse until they get their parents' permission.
Read more: “Everything I learned about suicide I learned from Instagram.”
Instagram is introducing a feature for parents looking for even more control, allowing them to block people from viewing, leaving or receiving comments on posts on their account.
Instagram has become the target of personal injury lawsuits in both state and federal courts over allegations it harms young people, with more than 1,800 plaintiffs filed a lawsuit in northern California against prominent social media companies including Instagram and Meta for “recklessly ignoring the impact of their products on children's mental and physical health.” One such lawsuit called Instagram an “addictive, harmful and at times fatal” platform.
However, the social media company hailed the newly announced changes as “the most significant update to teen accounts” since they were introduced in January 2024. The new restrictions will apply to the hundreds of millions of teenagers who use the app around the world, although they will first be gradually rolled out to people in the US, UK, Australia and Canada.
