On Tuesday, Meta Platforms, Facebook’s parent company, announced an enhanced safety usage plan that includes transitioning teen accounts to private by default and restricting personal messages to only those users a teen has followed or with whom they are already connected.
As a result, teens will not be able to view sensitive content on Instagram, and the platform’s algorithm will not recommend sexual content or materials related to suicide and self-harm.
Parents will also gain enhanced monitoring capabilities, although 16- and 17-year-olds can turn off these settings. Users under 16, however, will require parental permission to make changes. Furthermore, the supervision mode allows parents to limit their children’s Instagram usage.
Starting today, teenagers under 18 who join Instagram in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia will automatically switch to restricted teen accounts. Existing teen accounts will transition to teen accounts within the next 60 days, and adjustments for teens in the European Union (EU) will occur by the end of this year. Other countries will adopt these changes starting January next year, with South Korea expected to implement them as well.
Previously, governments from 33 states, including California, sued Meta in October last year, claiming that Facebook and Instagram’s addictive nature was damaging to teens’ mental health. The European Union has also launched an official investigation into Facebook and Instagram for potentially causing addiction in minors.
As a result, Meta announced this enhanced safety usage plan and has taken such measures.
Meta explained that it could track attempts by teens to falsify their age or use different devices to create adult accounts. It is also developing technology to predict whether someone who has set their age as an adult might actually be a teen.
Adam Mosseri, the CEO of Instagram, said he expects the number of teenage users on the platform to decrease significantly due to new measures. However, he noted that it would benefit the business in the long run to earn greater trust from parents.
