Instagram launches Teen Accounts with parental control features for young users

Meta-owned Instagram is launching Teen Accounts to put teenagers in built-in protections with a variety of safety measures, where even parents can get involved, the company said on its official blogpost Tuesday.

Teenagers under 16 will need a parent’s permission to change any of the built-in protections to be less strict within Teen Accounts, the company said.

“We developed Teen Accounts with parents and teens in mind. The new Teen Account protections are designed to address parents’ biggest concerns, including who their teens are talking to online, the content they’re seeing, and whether their time is being well spent,” the company said on its blog.

The protections include default private accounts, messaging restrictions, sensitive content restrictions, tags or mentions only by people they follow, and sleep mode enabled. The protections are turned on automatically, and parents decide if teens under 16 can change any of these settings, the company said.

If parents want more oversight over their children who are above sixteen, they can turn on parental supervision, the company said. Parents can now get insights into who their teens are chatting with, set total daily time limits for teens’ Instagram usage, block teens from using Instagram for specific time periods, and see topics a teen is looking at.

The company said teens who sign up now will be automatically put under Teen Accounts, and teens already using Instagram will be notified about the changes and will be moved into next week.

Instagram said it plans to move applicable users into Teen Accounts within 60 days in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia, in the European Union later this year, and around the world starting in January.

The company said it will also bring Teen Accounts to other Meta platforms next year.