Instagram is overhauling the way it works for teenagers, promising more “built-in protections” for young people and added controls and reassurance for parents.
The new “teen accounts”, for children aged 13 to 15, will force many privacy settings to be on by default, rather than a child opting in.
Teenagers’ posts will also be set to private – making them unviewable to people who don’t follow them, and they must approve all new followers.
These settings can only changed by giving a parent or guardian oversight of the account, or when the child turns 16.
Social media companies are under pressure worldwide to make their platforms safer, with concerns that not enough is being done to shield young people from harmful content.
The NSPCC called the announcement a “step in the right direction” but said Instagram’s owner, Meta, appeared to “putting the emphasis on children and parents needing to keep themselves safe.”
Rani Govender, the NSPCC’s online child safety policy manager, said Meta and other social media companies needed to take more action themselves.
“This must be backed up by proactive measures that prevent harmful content and sexual abuse from proliferating Instagram in the first place, so all children have the benefit of comprehensive protections on the products they use,” she said.
Meta describes the changes as a “new experience for teens, guided by parents”, and says they will “better support parents, and give them peace of mind that their teens are safe with the right protections in place.”
However, media regulator Ofcom raised concerns in April over parents’ willingness to intervene to keep their children safe online.
In a talk last week, senior Meta executive Sir Nick Clegg said: “One of the things we do find… is that even when we build these controls, parents don’t use them.”
Ian Russell, whose daughter Molly viewed content about self-harm and suicide on Instagram before taking her life aged 14, told the BBC it was important to wait and see how the new policy was implemented.
“Whether it works or not we’ll only find out when the measures come into place,” he said.
“Meta is very good at drumming up PR and making these big announcements, but what they also have to be good at is being transparent and sharing how well their measures are working.”
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