Ian Russell’s daughter Molly was 14 when she took her life after viewing content about self-harm and suicide on Instagram. On Tuesday, Instagram unveiled new “teen accounts,” and Russell told the BBC he would wait before judging them. “Whether it works or not we’ll only find out when the measures come into place,” he said.
The accounts start in the UK, US, Canada and Australia. They apply to everyone under 18 and switch on a set of privacy settings automatically. A teenager’s content can’t be seen by people who don’t follow them, and the teenager must approve every new follower.
For children aged 13 to 15, there is a catch. They can change those settings only by adding a parent or guardian to the account.
What parents can see
Parents who supervise an account can see who their child messages and which topics the child has said they like. They can’t read the messages. They also need an Instagram account of their own.
Other defaults include strict limits on sensitive content, to stop potentially harmful material being recommended, and muted notifications overnight. From January, Instagram will use AI tools in the US to spot teenagers who are using adult accounts and move them into teen accounts.
Meta calls the changes a “new experience for teens, guided by parents.”
Reaction
The NSPCC, a UK children’s charity, called the announcement a “step in the right direction.” Rani Govender, its online child safety policy manager, said such settings must be “backed up by proactive measures that prevent harmful content and sexual abuse from proliferating Instagram in the first place.”
Analyst Matt Navarra said the changes were significant but depend on enforcement. “As we’ve seen with teens throughout history, in these sorts of scenarios, they will find a way around the blocks, if they can,” he told the BBC.
Russell was blunter about Meta itself. “Meta is very good at drumming up PR and making these big announcements,” he said, “but what they also have to be good at is being transparent and sharing how well their measures are working.”
Meta’s Sir Nick Clegg admitted the limits of parental tools in a talk the week before: “even when we build these controls, parents don’t use them.” Instagram says it already offers more than 50 tools aimed at keeping teens safe. It introduced supervision tools for parents in 2022.
