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With growing concerns about the dangers of social media for adolescents, Instagram has rolled out Instagram Teen Accounts. It’s an attempt to offer more protection for the younger generation scrolling through the platform.

Starting today, any teen who signs up for Instagram—and teens already on the app—will automatically be placed under specific settings. The Instagram Teen Accounts also aims to allow parents to have more oversight and involvement in what their teen does on social media.

“These built-in protections really focus in on the biggest concerns that parents have raised,” Antigone Davis, Meta’s Global Head of Safety, tells Parents. “These include the content that their teen is seeing, the people with whom their teen is connecting, and the time they’re spending on their phones.”

So, what does that mean exactly, and will it have a positive impact on teens using social media?

What Are Instagram Teen Accounts?

All teens will be placed under several protective settings. Teens under 16 will need permission from their supervisor account—aka a caregiver—in order to change any of these baseline protections. Caregivers can approve requests from their own device. If desired, parents can also setup supervision for their kids 16 and above.

“We know that parents are interested in playing a more significant role in their teens’ lives online, from our consultation with them,” says Davis. “And so we’ve also built out some additional features within our supervision tools.”

Here’s what caregivers and their teens can expect:

• Private accounts: All teens 16 and under will be placed in private account mode. This means only those who follow them will be able to view their content and interact with them. Plus, they will need to manually accept new followers. 

• Stricter messaging settings: Teens will only be able to get messages from their current connections or people they follow.

• Restrictions on sensitive content: New users under 16 will be placed in the “Less” setting on Instagram, while those already on the platform will be sent a prompt encouraging them to choose that setting. The “Less” setting aims to reduce the sensitive content a teen may come across while scrolling the app, such as through Reels, Search, Explore, Hashtag Pages, Feed Recommendations, and Suggested Accounts.

• Interactions will be limited: People who teens follow will only be able to tag them or mention them. The “Hidden Words” feature will also be turned on. That filters offensive words and phrases from comments and direct messages (DM).

• Break reminders: After 60 minutes of app use, teens will be encouraged to close it. Teens over 16 can extend this “Daily Limit” feature, while those younger will need parental permission.

• Sleep mode: This is a new feature, and teens will be placed on “Sleep Mode” from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. It replaces the “Quiet Mode” and “Night Nudges” features and will stop notifications at night. If caregivers want to prevent teens from using Instagram completely at night, they can do that through the supervision tool. 

• Choosing topics of interest: This other new feature allows teens to see more content about topics they choose. They’ll start seeing those topics on Explore and in-Feed Recommendations. 

• Monitoring of interests: Parents will also be able to see the topics their teen has selected to see more of. 

• Tracking of teen messaging: Parents will now be able to see who their teen has been messaging, although they will not be able to read the messages.

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GettyImages/Richard Drury

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