Should We Believe the Hype?
An Overview of Instagram Teen Accounts
On Tuesday, Instagram (owned by Meta) announced Teen Accounts which features a number of built-in protections for teens and is touted by the company as “peace of mind for parents.” The changes don’t just apply to new accounts. Any teen currently registered will automatically be shifted into these new protected accounts, and those under 16 will need parent’s permission to make changes.
In short, accounts are now private by default, messaging is limited to followers, content recommendations are more restrictive, filters will hide offensive comments and DMs, notifications are muted between 10pm and 7am, and a time limit reminder will pop up after 60 minutes. Instagram also announced more supervision features to give parents insight on their teen’s account activity.
What’s more interesting is that Meta highlighted the ways it will to try to enforce Teen Accounts with age verification tools, most notably the AI they’ve been testing since 2022. Meta is taking these steps while still pushing for age verification at an app store level while Apple and Google keep pushing back.
Time will tell of course. Anything Meta can do to empower parents to keep teens safe is welcomed, but Meta’s trustworthiness is blemished and business model unchanged. Announcements like this are usually timed to external persuasion, though Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, insists, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, “the changes aren’t in response to legal or regulatory pressure, but are happening because Instagram has arrived at what it feels is the right approach to teen safety.”
In Meta-would-like-you-to-think-is unrelated news, the child safety bill we’ve been covering was advanced through The House Committee on Energy and Commerce this week.
According to the WSJ, Mosseri hinted again at Meta’s goodwill and emphasized the moves will cost them money. But it’s worth pointing out that the money… ultimately comes from us.
That revenue source is one of the things we cover in our upcoming social media online course for teens, adults, and families. We filmed the first of four modules last Thursday and will start releasing content before the end of the month. We believe this course will help us take back control from social media platforms and put us all in the driver’s seat. Be sure to subscribe!