Instagram has announced the launch of Teen Accounts to make the online experience safer for teens, the company says. These new accounts come with standard protections that limit who teens can contact and what content they can view. In the past, platforms like Instagram have been repeatedly criticized for not taking enough steps to protect youth and children.
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Automatically enabled protections include enhanced privacy, strict message limits, and sensitive content restrictions. Teens can only be contacted by people they follow, tag, or mention. There are also default reminders to close the app if it has been used for more than 60 minutes in a day. A sleep mode is also activated between 10 pm and 7 am, during which notifications are muted and automatic replies to direct messages are sent.
Instagram has launched accounts for minors with limited features like time limits. Parents can also see who their child is in contact with.
(Image: Instagram)
Parents have the opportunity to view their children’s contacts and set time limits. For teens under 16, parental permission is required to set less stringent security settings. Parents who want more control over the accounts of their older teens – 16 and older – can also activate parental monitoring.
Instagram wants to detect teens who lie
Instagram is also continuing to work on identifying minor accounts and automatically applying age-appropriate security functions and settings, even if the minors themselves claim to be of legal age. “We know that teens try to bypass restrictions from time to time,” says Instagram boss Adam Mosseri, explaining the efforts. on Good Morning America. For example, it is no longer possible to create a new account with a different birth date on the same device. “We are also working on ways to automatically detect people who are lying about their age,” explains Mosseri. Only then will the protective measures take effect.
From now on, teens will automatically receive a teen account when they sign up for Instagram. The change to teen accounts for existing users is expected to begin next week. In the US, UK, Canada, and Australia, the plan is for teens to receive a teen account within 60 days. This will likely come to EU countries by the end of the year and then worldwide from 2025 and to other Meta platforms as well.
(Mac)
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