Instagram locks down teens: How the new feature will work

All teens using Instagram will automatically have strong restrictions applied, with the change expected to roll out over the next 60 days in a push by parent company Meta to protect children by default rather than putting the onus on parents to instigate controls.

The new “teen accounts” program, which Meta says is informed by extensive research taking in views from parents, teens and experts, is an expansion of the existing supervised accounts, except it will apply proactively to every user aged between 13 and 17.

All teen users will be automatically subject to strong restrictions.Credit: Istock

Teen accounts are private, can only be messaged by established contacts, have the most restrictive content settings, have a 60-minute daily time limit and are inaccessible between 10pm and 7am. Users aged 16 or 17 can change some of these settings to be less restrictive if they choose, but younger teens will need a parent to set up supervision and approve any such changes. Once supervision is set up, parents also get access to certain information, including how often their child uses Instagram and who they message.

Adam Mosseri, Meta’s head of Instagram, said the program was designed to give peace of mind to the parents who ultimately control whether their kids are allowed on Instagram while also giving kids a safe experience that doesn’t feel too restrictive.

“We’ve tried wherever possible to find the overlap between what parents want and what teens want and lean into that. I’m sure there will some be some parents who think that we aren’t going far enough, and there’ll be some teens who think we’ve gone too far,” he said.

“But we want to make sure that we do all we can to keep Instagram safe for teens in a way that doesn’t require parents to do anything.”

The change addresses an issue faced by many tech platforms, which often develop robust parental control or child safety mechanisms that end up being underutilised. Parents face an overwhelming task in initiating parental controls on every single app or device their children use, especially when they can’t be sure the kids won’t simply move to a different app.

Another obvious problem is that teen users can simply lie about their age to circumvent most restrictions. Mosseri said Meta was a strong advocate for apps being able to get age information from Apple and Google accounts to easily identify youngsters (“As an app developer, I can ask for access to your microphone, to your camera and to where in the world you are right now, I should be able to ask for day you were born”), but in lieu of that the company was developing AI solutions that would aim to sort through Instagram’s 2 billion users and detect teens pretending to be adults.

Today, Meta uses other methods to detect lying teens, flagging a device if it accesses multiple accounts with different ages and allowing parents to report underage users. But Mosseri said the issue could also be lessened by giving teens the option of an appropriate but not overbearing level of restrictions.

Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, said the changes were built with parents and not regulators in mind.Credit: AP

“The more restrictive the experience is, the stronger the theoretical incentive there is for a teen to try to work around the restrictions,” he said.

“So, for instance, [with a supervised account], parents can see who a teen messages, but they cannot see the content of that message. That’s a good example of us trying to balance the two equities.”

Meta said the program had been in the works for a long time and was a huge change in terms of infrastructure, so it was not a response to recent debates on social media bans for kids. Mosseri said that while the company was committed to complying with local laws and regulations, it never made features with politicians in mind.

“The situation in Australia is more antagonistic than any other region at this point. ” he said.

Get news and reviews on technology, gadgets and gaming in our Technology newsletter every Friday. Sign up here.