With the aim of bolstering safety measures for younger audience, Instagram has announced steps that will protect their accounts.
Instagram recently announced a significant update on how it is handling teen accounts to make the platform safer for younger users. This will include defaulting teen accounts to be private and adding advanced privacy and messaging settings.
Here are Instagrams Major Updates and Features
Private Accounts Default:
All teens under the age of 18 will now have a private account by default. People they let follow would be able to see the post and interact with the account.
Messaging and Tagging Features:
They can only allow messaging when the users are connected, and no one else can tag or mention the teen unless they follow the teen’s account.
Content Restrictions:
There will be stronger controls on what can appear on teen users’ Explore pages and in Reels. It will block sensitive content, including posts that advertise cosmetic procedures or other adult-oriented material, from the app’s teen users.
Supervision Tools for Parents :
New features that will unleash for the parents to track what their children have been in contact with on the app more closely. These include features such as seeing messages recently sent, limiting usage time, and regulating the rate at which specific types of content are found by them.
Time and Interaction Limits:
Sending alerts reminding users to limit their screen time and also a “sleep mode” feature in which notifications during night times are muted to somehow save teenagers from possible sleep disorders.
These changes are implemented following increased levels of scrutiny from social platforms regarding the safety towards young users and it is in tandem with the concerns of parents regarding online interactions as well as access to content. Meta, the owner of Instagram, has taken these updates in the face of criticisms and legal proceedings regarding its strategies of protecting young users against online harm.
It forms one of the newer initiatives toward safer controlled environments for underage user engagement on social media platforms, in bid to converge with digital safety standards and comply with demands from public and the legal fraternity for better protections of youth online.
