Meta is placing Instagram users under 18 into new “teen accounts” to allow parents more control over their activities, including the ability to block kids from viewing the app overnight.
In an announcement made a week after the Australian government proposed restricting children’s access to such platforms, Meta says it is rolling out teen accounts on Instagram that will apply to new users. The settings will then be rolled out to teens’ existing accounts over time.
Changes to teen account settings include giving parents the ability to set daily time limits for using the app, block teens from using Instagram at certain times, see the accounts their kids are messaging, and view the categories of content they’re viewing.
Teens who sign up for Instagram are already set up by default with the strictest privacy settings, which include prohibiting adults from messaging teens who don’t follow them and silencing notifications at night.
However, with the new “teen account” feature, users under 16 will need parental permission to change those settings, while 16- to 18-year-olds who have the new feature by default will be able to change it independently. Once a child under 16 tries to change their settings, parental monitoring features will allow adults to set new time limits, block access at night, and see who their child is messaging with.
This comes after the Australian government last week announced plans to introduce legislation to parliament before the end of the year to raise the age at which children can access social media to an as-yet-undefined age of 14 to 16.
But unlike other actions the company has taken recently (including allowing EU users to opt out of having their data used to train its AI model but not offering a similar option in Australia), Meta’s move is global and will apply to the US, UK and Canada, as well as Australia.
Meta’s global security director Antigone Davis said the decision to introduce teen accounts was driven by parents and not by any government legislation or proposal.
“Parents around the world are thinking about these issues,” Davis told Guardian Australia.
“Technology is pretty ubiquitous right now and parents are thinking about it. From a youth safety perspective, it really makes more sense to think about these kinds of things globally and address parents’ concerns globally.”
Davis didn’t rule out implementing the changes at Facebook in the future, but said the company would examine what measures might make sense for different apps.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the main reason for raising the age at which teenagers can access social media was to give them “real-life experiences”.
“What we want is for our children to get off their devices and play football or basketball, to interact with real people and have real experiences,” he told Channel Seven’s Sunrise programme. “And we know that social media is doing social harm.”
But Davis said teens would also find social media to be giving them “real” experiences.
“For the teenager who plays soccer and is on the soccer team and is trying to perfect a particular kick or a particular pass, they are going to use social media to figure it out, in a way that we might not have done, and in some ways that is the real value,” he said.
“I think they move much more fluidly through these apps and their online and offline worlds. I don’t think they make that separation.”
If the Australian proposal goes ahead, the country could be one of the first to put a ban in place. UK Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said last week that he was closely monitoring how the Australian model might work and was keeping an open mind about whether the UK could follow suit in the future.
Existing private account settings for teens that will be changed to the new teen accounts feature include requiring those under 18 to accept new followers, being placed in the most sensitive content restrictions, and filtering out offensive words and phrases in posts and messages.
The changes also come after Nick Clegg, a senior executive at Instagram’s parent company Meta, said parents were not using parental control features.
“One of the things we found… is that even when we built these controls, parents don’t use them,” he said last week.