Instagram launches teen accounts with private settings, limited capabilities

Canadian teens signing up for Instagram will now be among the first in the world to be automatically given private accounts with limited capabilities.

The new accounts for teens will come with default restrictions blocking underage users from being messaged by people they aren’t connected with and that won’t show sensitive content such as posts that depict violence or encourage cosmetic procedures.

Parental supervision tools baked into the accounts will allow parents to see who their teen is messaging, when and how long they’re on Instagram, and set time limits for their kids. Those under the age of 16 will only be able to change the settings with parental approval.

Underage users in Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and Australia who sign up for Instagram on Tuesday or after will be given a teen account immediately, while those already on the platform will be moved to an account with the stricter settings over the next 60 days.

The teen accounts are meant to better protect kids but also let parents guide their online experience, which was getting tougher to do in the digital age, said Antigone Davis, vice-president and global head of safety at Instagram parent company Meta Platforms Inc.

“Certainly, when I was a teen, my parents could get a lot from hearing my side of a phone conversation. They could get a lot by seeing who it was that I was interacting with and which friends I hadn’t had over in a while,” she said.

“But with so much happening online, parents have lost some of that visibility and it makes it harder for them to have conversations about what’s happening in their teens lives. This really opens up an opportunity for them to … have that kind of visibility and those insights to have those important conversations.”

Instagram’s experimentation with teen accounts comes as the world is more closely considering how much time young people are spending online and what more can be done to protect them on social media, where many say the risk of harm is high.

Meta’s former engineering director Arturo Béjar told U.S. Congress last year that 13 per cent of Instagram users between the ages of 13 and 15 received unwanted sexual advances on the platform within the previous seven days. Whistleblower and former Meta staffer Frances Haugen has leaked an internal study that found 13.5 per cent of U.K. teen girls reported having suicidal thoughts that became more frequent after starting on Instagram.

A cascade of studies has also linked time online to lower self-esteem and academic performance as well as more exposure to hateful, violent and mature content.

Statistics Canada data from 2022 shows 42 per cent of people between the ages of 15 and 24 were spending 20 hours or more per week using the internet for “general purposes,” which includes social media, browsing the web, online shopping and reading the news.

To address the dangers of social media, many provinces have banned cellphones from classrooms this year, while a handful of Ontario boards are suing Meta, TikTok and Snap for billions over accusations that the companies negligently design their products for compulsive use and rewire the way children think, behave and learn.

The platforms have, meanwhile, dabbled with more restrictive settings for minors.

TikTok, for example, has one-hour screen time limits for users under 18 that can only be bypassed with a code. It also offers family pairing, which allows parents to link their accounts directly with their teens’ and ensure their kids’ TikTok settings are agreed upon as a family.

Over at Snap, parental controls are also available along with tools that can keep teens from being contacted by anyone other than friends or people who already have their phone number and location-sharing is turned off by default.

Davis said Instagram will be able to catch if the user is lying about their age.

“If we see a teen who has an account once we make this announcement, try to set up an additional account and register as an adult, we’re going to ask them to verify their age,” she said.

“If we see a teen, try to change their age to an adult age within their existing account, we’re going to ask them to verify their age.”

The age verification can include teens handing over ID but also makes use of Yoti, a company relying on facial analysis to determine one’s age.

Technology that Instagram is using will also alert the company to instances when teens report that they’re a certain age but then receive birthday wishes or post about being another age, Davis said.