Instagram to automatically put teens into private accounts with increased restrictions and parental controls
NBCSep 29
Instagram Launches Teen Accounts Amid Child Safety Concerns
Image copyright: NurPhoto/Contributor/NurPhoto via Getty Images
The Facts
In response to growing child safety concerns from parents and youth groups, Meta-owned social media app Instagram has implemented new restrictions for users under the age of 18.
The new features include automatically setting every teen's account — of which there are 100M globally — to private, limiting their direct messaging (DM) only to accounts they follow, and reducing the amount of adult-oriented content they see.
The Spin
Pro-establishment narrative
Instagram is taking extraordinary measures to protect young people and their mental health. Not only has it imposed account privatization and restricted access to harmful content, but it's also utilizing AI to enforce these rules on a global scale. While tens of millions of teens already admit their real age, those who try and bypass the restrictions will have a very tough time of it.
Establishment-critical narrative
Instagram is only taking these measures because the US government is discussing new regulations. And even with these new rules, teens will still create fake accounts, or 'finstas,' which will allow them to easily bypass each of these guardrails. With this bandaid-of-a-policy now in place, the government is likely to close the chapter on this and stop investigating how damaging this technology is for kids' mental health.