A Look at Instagram's New Teen Accounts
And also: why don't adults get access to these features?
So, usually I wouldn’t send you all two newsletters in a week — and normally they would not both be about kids and screens, because I know not all of you have children. BUT this week is an exception because it is a huge news week, and I want to keep you all informed. (As always, if this type of post does not interest you, you can go into your Substack settings and unsubscribe specifically from my Kids and Phones section while staying on the overall “How to Feel Alive” list.)
First, as I mentioned earlier this week, the United States House of Representatives is currently considering whether to pass a piece of legislation (already passed by the Senate in a wonderfully bipartisan vote of 91-3) called KOSPA. Short for the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act, it’s the first piece of legislation in over 25 years that specifically addresses how to keep children safe online. Big Tech is doing its best to water it down (and in some cases to block it entirely) — and we need to speak up.
If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to use this tool — created by FairPlayForKids.org — to contact your representative and ask them to support the strongest possible version of KOSPA (currently, the strongest version is the Senate version). It takes about 3 minutes total, and truly could make a difference — please do it today!
(I was so eager to get this message out earlier this week that I sent a newsletter after business hours, meaning that some of you may not have actually gotten through to your Representative’s office — so let’s try that again!)
And now, on to:
Instagram’s New Teen Accounts
In what surely must be a complete and total coincidence, on the very same day that a House committee was marking up KOSPA, Instagram announced the launch of Teen Accounts for Instagram, with features designed to protect teenagers (and younger kids who aren’t supposed to be on the platform to begin with) from some of the darker aspects of Instagram, such as, oh, I dunno, bullying, harassment, inappropriate content, compulsive use, and unwanted sexual advances from pedophiles and strangers.
I’ll admit, I was quite cynical about this announcement and its timing — and to some degree, I still am. But, having just spent several hours reading through Instagram’s own description of the new features (and clicking on all the links!), I’m pleased to say that there actually are some changes that I believe will be meaningful.
TL;DR
Instagram is taking steps to automatically place new or pre-existing users who are under the age of 16 into a “Teen Account.” Here is their description of what makes Teen Accounts different from adult accounts, along with instructions for how parents can use the new parent supervision features.
More detail:
Here is how Instagram itself describes some of the most important changes:
Private accounts: With default private accounts, teens need to accept new followers and people who don’t follow them can’t see their content or interact with them. This applies to all teens under 16 (including those already on Instagram and those signing up) and teens under 18 when they sign up for the app.
Messaging restrictions: Teens will be placed in the strictest messaging settings, so they can only be messaged by people they follow or are already connected to.
Sensitive content restrictions: Teens will automatically be placed into the most restrictive setting of our sensitive content control, which limits the type of sensitive content (such as content that shows people fighting or promotes cosmetic procedures) teens see in places like Explore and Reels.
Limited interactions: Teens can only be tagged or mentioned by people they follow. We’ll also automatically turn on the most restrictive version of our anti-bullying feature, Hidden Words, so that offensive words and phrases will be filtered out of teens’ comments and DM requests.
Time limit reminders: Teens will get notifications telling them to leave the app after 60 minutes each day. (My note: even better, parents will have the option to fully block their teen’s access to Instagram after this time limit has been reached.)
Sleep mode enabled: Sleep mode will be turned on between 10 PM and 7 AM, which will mute notifications overnight and send auto-replies to DMs. (My note: parents also will have the option to fully block their teen’s access to Instagram during these hours.)
These are all very positive — and massively overdue — changes.
Introducing Parental Supervision
What’s more, users who are under 16 years old will not be able to change any of these settings without a parent’s approval. (Teens between 16 and 18 will not automatically be put into Teen Accounts, but Meta will offer parents the option to set one up for them and enable parental supervision features.) As the announcement explains:
Teens under 16 will need their parent’s permission to use less protective settings. To get permission, teens will need to set up parental supervision on Instagram. If parents want more oversight over their older teen’s (16+) experiences, they simply have to turn on parental supervision. Then, they can approve any changes to these settings, irrespective of their teen’s age.
Once supervision is established, parents can approve and deny their teens’ requests to change settings or allow teens to manage their settings themselves. Soon, parents will also be able to change these settings directly to be more protective.
According to the announcement, parents who want to will also be able to:
Get insights into who their teens are chatting with: While parents can’t read their teen’s messages, now they will be able to see who their teen has messaged in the past seven days.
Set total daily time limits for teens’ Instagram usage: [As I noted above] Parents can decide how much time their teen can spend on Instagram each day. Once a teen hits that limit, they’ll no longer be able to access the app.
Block teens from using Instagram for specific time periods: [As I noted above] Parents can choose to block their teens from using Instagram at night, or specific time periods, with one easy button.
See topics your teen is looking at: Parents can view the age-appropriate topics their teen has chosen to see content from, based on their interests.
Some people may not like the idea of being able to see their children’s contacts and the types of content they’ve chosen to look at—but these features are optional. Overall, I think these changes are all steps in the right direction.
FAQ
Here are answers to the four main questions you probably have:
Q: When are Teen Accounts going to be rolled out?
A: According to Meta’s announcement from September 17, 2024:
Today, we’ll start placing teens who sign up for Instagram into Teen Accounts, and we’ll notify teens already using Instagram about these changes so we can begin moving them into Teen Accounts next week.
We plan to place teens into Teen Accounts within 60 days in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, and to start placing them in Teen Accounts in the European Union later this year. Teens around the world will start to get Teen Accounts in January. We’ll also bring Teen Accounts to other Meta platforms next year.
Q: Does these settings just apply to new teen accounts, or is Meta going to retroactively apply them to all teen accounts?
A: As indicated in that quote above, Meta claims it is going to retroactively apply these settings to all accounts that it knows belong to teenagers under 16.
More specifically, Meta is going to automatically apply these settings to all accounts that it knows belong to kids between 13 and 15 years old — because technically, kids under 13 years old are legally not supposed to be allowed on Instagram to begin with.Q: Kids lie about their age all the time. How is Meta going to verify teenagers’ ages?
This, of course, is the million dollar question. Meta’s short answer, quoted from here, is:
Teens may lie about their age to circumvent these new protections. That’s why we’re requiring teens to verify their age in new ways. For example, if they attempt to create a new account with an adult birthday, we will require them to verify their age in order to use the account. We’re also building new technology to find teens that have lied about their age to automatically place them in protected settings
I went a little deeper into this question, because to me it’s the most important one, and I found a bit more information:
If an account owner tries to change their birthdate on the app to indicate that they’re an adult (or tries to open a new account as an adult — which I assume many kids will do, in an attempt to pretend to be their own parent!), Meta/Instagram will ask them to manually verify their age, either by uploading an ID or by posting a video selfie. (Here is an article/video explaining how the video/selfie option works.) Note that the video selfie option appears to have been developed to determine whether someone is over or under 18 years old; it’s not clear to me how well this technology can determine whether, say, someone is 15 (and thus should automatically be given a teen account) or 16 (in which case, the teen account feature is optional).
According to this article, Meta is also using AI-powered algorithms to identify accounts that it suspects are being used by kids under age 16. If the algorithm suspects that the user is under age, my understanding is that it’ll ask them to verify their age by uploading an ID or video selfie, per the article I linked to above. Here’s a brief description from Meta of how it works:
To develop our adult classifier, we first train an AI model on signals such as profile information, like when a person’s account was created and interactions with other profiles and content. For example, people in the same age group tend to interact similarly with certain types of content. From those signals, the model learns to make calculations about whether someone is an adult or a teen.
Q: What about kids who are younger than 13?
A: Kids under 13 are legally not supposed to be allowed to have their own Instagram (or social media accounts) until they’re at least 13, thanks to the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act. That’s why Instagram’s policies state that the platform will delete accounts if it can’t verify that their owners are over 13 years old. But historically, the company hasn’t done much to try to proactively find those accounts.
Hopefully this is changing — it certainly seems like it’ll have to, if Instagram is going to be proactively putting teens into Teen Accounts. But I haven’t been able to find any specific information about what Instagram is going to do if its “adult classifier” AI algorithm (i.e. the algorithm it’ll be using to find suspected 13-15-year-old users and put them into Teen Accounts) suspects that a user is under 13. (My hope is that it’ll delete them!) If anyone else finds any information on this, please leave a link in the comments and I’ll update this post.
Lastly, while I think all these changes are positive and long overdue, I do have two final points:
This does not suddenly make Instagram (or social media) a good use of time.
The promo video that Meta put together for its new teen accounts (you can see it at the top of this page) claims that these features will help teens “safely connect to the people and things that matter most.”
That’s a lovely sentiment, but hopefully, we can all agree that the way to “connect to people and things that matter most” is to spend time with those people (and on those things) in real life—not by passively scrolling through algorithmically chosen content on Instagram!
How come teenagers get all the good stuff?
Instagram’s new Teen Accounts have two features that I hope they’ll consider rolling out for adults, too:
Time Management - as you may already know, right now, the only built-in time management feature that Instagram offers to adults is a “daily time limit reminder” — essentially something that tells you when you’re about to waste more time than you want to on Instagram, but that doesn’t actually block it. (Here’s how to set it up.)
As a result, people like me have to give annoyingly complex workaround suggestions, such as buying a separate device like the Brick (you can use SCREENLIFEBALANCE10 for 10% off) or Unpluq tags (15% off if you use that link) to block yourself, or installing 3rd party apps such as ScreenZen or Opal.
It would be so much better (for our sanity, if not for Instagram’s profits) if adults were given a native option to set enforceable time limits for themselves — and actually block their own access to the app.
Content curation: Per Instagram’s description of these new accounts, “Teens will also get access to a new feature, made just for them, that lets them select topics they want to see more of in Explore and their recommendations so they can focus on the fun, positive content they love.” Adults’ feeds, on the other hand, will continue to be filled with whatever sh*t the algorithm decides to show them.
(Very) Long Story Short:
These are all very positive advances, but they’re long overdue—and there is more to be done.
Let’s work together to put more pressure on social media companies by getting KOSPA passed.
To scrolling less and living more,
Learn More:
This page has answers to more FAQ about Teen Accounts
How to set up parental supervision on Instagram Teen Accounts
Meta’s full report on “How Research and Consultation Informed Instagram Teen Accounts”
How Meta is using Artificial Intelligence to evaluate users’ ages
Here’s a summary of Teen Accounts from NPR.
Great summary, Catherine. But I'll join you in the cynicism. Because what we're doing is celebrating a decision to show less explicit content to seventh graders, disallow strangers from talking to seventh graders, and encouraging seventh graders to get enough sleep. Wait, Instagram, why did that take 14 years? And how did you convince us to celebrate slightly less negligence toward children? Almost feels like gaslighting.
I keep seeing that this will limit the time on "the app." Is the time restriction linked to the teen account or to the app? In other words, would the time restriction prevent the teen from logging into instagram through the web browser on their phones or other devices?