Instagram to test youth ingenuity with new restrictions on teens
Instagram now has a variety of new privacy settings for everyone under 18, which will begin rolling out on Tuesday for new and existing users
Photo by: Matt Cardy/Getty Images
Teens have long ruled the Internet, but teen Internet safety is all the rage right now. YouTube, Spotify, and Snapchat have all recently introduced parental settings. Uber has a whole “Uber for teens” campaign with morose ads about kids getting cut from the football team and texting their parents when they’re on the way home. Now Instagram has introduced mandatory “Teen Accounts” that have built-in privacy protections.
Beginning on Tuesday, new users under the age of 18 will automatically be put on a Teen Account, while teens who already have accounts will be switched over in the next 60 days. The new settings automatically make teen accounts private, rather than public; users under 16 will need a parent’s permission to switch to public accounts. On Teen Accounts, users can only message with people they follow, and there will be a setting allowing parents to see with whom their teens are messaging. Teens will be able to choose “age-appropriate” topics for posts fed to them by the algorithm (which their parents can also see), and all Teen Accounts will be placed into “sleep mode” restricting users’ access to the app from 10 PM to 7 AM.