Last week, Instagram announced that any new Instagram accounts created by users aged 13-16 (13 being the minimum age you can set up an Instagram account) will automatically be created as a more restricted “teen account”, which has additional protections built in. These protections are:
- Private accounts: new accounts default to private – this applies to anyone aged 18 who signs up for a new account and everyone who is under 16 (including those who already have an Instagram account).
- Sensitive content restrictions: teen accounts will be placed into the most restrictive ‘sensitive content control’ setting.
- Limited interactions: users can only be tagged or mentioned by people they follow. Offensive words and phrases will be filtered out of comments and DMs (private messages).
- Time limit reminders: users will get notifications telling them to leave the app after 60 minutes each day.
- Sleep mode: notifications will be muted between 10pm and 7am.
Clearly, for this to work, users will have to be truthful about their age when setting up their accounts
These settings can also be turned on and off, but those aged 16 and below will have to set up parental supervision and those parents have to approve the changes. The parental supervision feature is not new, but there are additional features including ways to see who your children are talking to (but not the content of these messages), setting daily time limits, blocking specific time periods and seeing the topics that children are looking at.
For more information, there is a link below to a BBC News story about these new measures:
Instagram gives parents more control over teen accounts – BBC News