Instagram to automatically put teens into private accounts with increased restrictions and parental controls
NBCSEP 12 2024
In response to gowing child safety concerns from parents and youth groups, Meta-owned social media app Instagram has implemented new restrictions for users under the age of 18.In response to growing child safety concerns from parents and youth groups, Meta-owned social media app Instagram has implemented new restrictions for users under the age of 18.
The new features include automatically setting every teen's account — of which there are 100M globally — to private, limiting their direct messaging (DM) only to accounts they follow, and reducing the amount of adult-oriented content they see.
Teens will also "only be tagged or mentioned by people they follow," receive "notifications telling them to leave the app after 60 minutes each day," hide "offensive words and phrases" from their "comments and DM requests," and "mute notifications" from 10 p.m to 7 a.m.Teens will also "only be tagged or mentioned by people they follow," receive "notifications telling them to leave the app after 60 minutes each day," hide "offensive words and phrases" from their "comments and DM requests," and "mute notifications" from 10 pm to 7 am.
Instagram is taking extraodinaryextraordinary measures to protect young people and their mental health. Not only has it imposed account privatization and restricted access to harmful content, but it's utilizing AI to enforce these rules on a global scale. While tens of millions of teens already admit their real age, those who try and bypass the restrictions will have a very tough time of it.
Instagram is only taking these measures because the US government is discussing new regulations. And even with these new rules, teens will still create fake accounts, or 'finstas,' which will allow them to easily bypass each of these guardrails. With this bandaid-of-a-policy now in place, the companygovernment willis asklikely itsto paid-offclose friendsthe inchapter theon governmentthis toand please stop investigating how awfuldamaging theirthis technology is for kids.