Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has announced the phased rollout of its “Instagram Teen Accounts” feature in India, aimed at users aged 13-17. This move is part of Instagram’s ongoing efforts to enhance the safety and privacy of younger users, particularly as concerns over online protection grow among parents and lawmakers.
Originally launched in September 2024, the feature was first introduced in countries including the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada, followed by the European Union. With the expansion to India, Instagram aims to create a safer environment for teens on the platform by automatically implementing privacy protections for all new and existing teen accounts.
As part of these enhanced protections, all Instagram accounts belonging to users aged 13 to 17 will automatically be set to private. Even if a teen account was previously public, it will now have more restrictive settings, including limits on who can contact them and what kind of content they can view in sections like Reels and Explore. Teens aged 16 and 17 will be able to opt out of some of these privacy settings unless their accounts are supervised by a parent or guardian. For users under 16, any changes to privacy settings will require parental consent.
The newly introduced “Teen Accounts” will come with several new features designed to safeguard younger users:
– Private Accounts and Controlled Interactions: Teen users will need to manually accept new followers, and they will only receive messages from those they follow or already know. In addition, they can only be tagged or mentioned by people they follow. Anyone who doesn’t follow them will not be able to interact with or see their posts.
– Filtered Comments and Messages: Instagram will automatically filter out offensive language and phrases from comments and direct message requests, leveraging its anti-bullying tool, “Hidden Words.”
– Content Restrictions: Teens will not be able to see sensitive content in search results or in recommendations in sections like Reels, Explore, and Feed. Content that could be sexually suggestive or related to cosmetic procedures will be hidden, even if shared by people they follow.
– Customized Recommendations: Teens will have the option to select specific topics they are interested in, such as animals, sports, music, cooking, and more. These interests will guide the content shown in their Explore tab and recommendations. Parents will also be able to view these selections.
– Sleep Mode: Instagram will automatically enable a sleep mode between 10 PM and 7 AM, which will mute notifications and send auto-replies to any messages received during that time. Parents will be able to set their own custom daily-time limits for their teen’s Instagram usage.
– Parental Supervision: Teens under the age of 16 will be required to set up parental supervision in order to change certain settings. Parents can approve or deny requests for setting changes and may soon be able to adjust these settings directly.
– Daily Usage Reminders: Instagram will also remind teens to take a break after using the app for one hour, encouraging healthy screen time habits.
In addition to Teen Accounts, Instagram is rolling out several new tools for parents to help them manage their teen’s online experience. These new features include message monitoring, time management and strengthened age verification.
With this, now parents will be able to see who their teen has messaged over the past seven days, without accessing the content of the messages themselves, and can set daily time limits for their teens on Instagram and block access to the app during specific periods with a single button. Age verification systems will help to prevent teens from bypassing restrictions by providing false birthdates.