Many companies are actively working towards monitoring the social media consumption of teenagers as parents have growing concerns about ensuring child safety in the digital space. Instagram has been actively working on bringing automatic safe protection for teen users and putting parents at ease. The platform has introduced a new safety net that places users under 18 into restrictive and more private accounts, irrespective of whether they have recently been on the platform or for a while.
Instagram is actively working on keeping teens safe by introducing a new restricted account to act as a digital shield for its young users
While Instagram has gained massive popularity in recent times as a social media platform, with many young people indulging in the experience as well, parents of teenagers have actively expressed their concerns regarding monitoring the usage and the extent of access to the platform. To combat this, Instagram is taking a holistic approach by introducing Teen Accounts for users 18 and under and is introducing a set of privacy features.
The set of restrictions is automatically applied to young users, and all teenagers' accounts are private by default. For minors, even more stringent restrictions would be placed that prevent strangers from sending DMs to young users. There is also a Sleep Mode feature that would mute the notifications at night from 10 PM to 7 AM to control the usage of social media for teens.
Teens would be able to select only topics relevant to their specific age group, which would then appear on the Explore page or the platform's recommendations. Alerts would also be in place to remind young users to use Instagram sparingly and to close the app.
The company is actively working on controlling teen users' end and giving more control to parents who want to keep a tab of their kid's activities on the app. Parents would be able to know who the child has been messaging in the last week and the topics they have been viewing.
Teenagers 16 and above can change some of the settings, but those who are even younger would need their parents' permission for any tweaks to be made. Instagram's teen accounts are being rolled out to users in the UK, U.S., Canada and Australia.
To ensure young users do not rely on workarounds, Instagram now has more ways to verify age, such as uploading an ID card or even a video selfie. Instagram would even use AI to verify a user's age through information shared otherwise, but that would require a multi-layered approach to ensure accuracy.
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