Instagram releases teen accounts with built-in privacy, parental controls

Instagram on Tuesday announced the launch of new privacy and parental controls for teenagers on the platform to address rising concerns about the negative impacts of social media and give parents more control over their children's online experience.

Instagram and Facebook parent Meta said the new Teen Accounts would automatically set to private with the need to approve new followers, and include new restrictions on messaging, sensitive content and interactions with users. It will also include new time limit reminders and a sleep mode feature.

Antigone Davis, Meta's head of global safety, spoke with FOX Business Network's Madison Alworth in an exclusive interview about the new Teen Accounts and related safety features.

"It's really a game changer for parents," Davis said in the interview. "And with this launch, tens of millions of teens will have an entirely new experience on the platform. What we'll be doing is putting them into automatic protections if they're under the age of 18 and if they're under the age of 16, a parent will have to give them permission in order to change those settings."

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Davis said the three biggest concerns for parents are who their teens are connecting with on the platform, what content they're seeing and how much time they're spending on the phone. It will also give parents the ability to see who their teen has been talking with in the past seven days – though it won't show parents the content of the messages in that conversation.

"I think one of the things to understand is that there's someone else on the other side of that message. So we wouldn't be just sharing the teen's content, but we'd actually be sharing somebody else's content, which creates real privacy concerns," Davis said. 

She noted that parents can use the tool to have a conversation with their teen if they see a significant number of messages or those messages are occurring outside the timeframe they're permitted to use the app.

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Davis explained that Instagram's Teen Accounts give parents the ability to set daily time limits for Instagram usage, block them from using the platform at night or within specific time periods, as well as seeing the content and topics that their teen is engaging with on the platform.

"Teens are developing their, what they call executive functioning skills. These are the skills that sort of allow you to regulate your own behavior, are still developing, that's part of that whole teenage transition to becoming an adult. And what we wanted to do is have those notifications, encourage them to use their own skills to self-regulate," she explained.

"But a parent knows when their teen may not be able to actually do that, and to really encourage through these permission settings bringing parents in so if a teen can't do that, has a hard time doing that, a parent can help them do it. A parent can set those boundaries for them," Davis added.

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Current teen users of Instagram will be placed into the new Teen Accounts format within the next 60 days for residents of the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia. The feature will be available in the European Union later this year, while users in other parts of the world will start to get access to Teen Accounts in January.

Meta also noted in the announcement that Teen Accounts will be brought to the companies' other platforms next year, which means that Facebook and Threads users may soon have access to a similar experience.

"We expect some of them are not going to like these protections. It may actually decrease the time they spend on the platform. It may change the way they do it. We may see some teens try to lie to get around these protections," Davis explained, adding that Meta will prompt them to verify their age if they try to sign up as an adult or change their age to get around the safeguards.

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Alworth noted that the Senate-passed Kids Online Safety Act, which is pending in the House, would increase regulation of social media platforms and asked whether Instagram's Teen Accounts launch was linked to the legislation's progress.

"This launch was really designed to take in parents' concerns, to take in their biggest concerns and respond specifically to those concerns," Davis said. "To the extent that policymakers are listening to parents, this change should answer a lot of those concerns."