What Are Instagram Teen Accounts? Key Updates Every Parent Needs To Know

Instagram has introduced Teen accounts that are meant to protect teenagers from harmful and age-inappropriate content. So, no matter if you’re a teenager or a parent, you should definitely know about these new features.

Facebook’s parent company Meta has been taking flak for years regarding the lack of protections for underaged users. In May this year, the European Commission opened a probe into Facebook and Instagram on suspicions that the platforms are causing addictive behaviour in children.

And not too long ago, the Australian government announced its plans to introduce legislation to raise the age children can access social media up to 14 or 16. The introduction of Instagram Teen accounts seems like a knee-jerk reaction to all this.

The way these features work is that millions of accounts of teenagers will get branded as Instagram Teen accounts. They will receive special built-in protections and, more importantly, will have to deal with parental controls that can only be altered by those above 16 years of age.

So, if you’re a teenager, what changes?

1. Your profile will be private by default, requiring your approval if anyone wants to follow you.
2. Strangers won’t be able to send you DMs.
3. A Sleep Mode will mute your Instagram notifications from 10 pm to 7 am.
4. You will get to pick from a number of topics, based on which, your Instagram recommendations and Explore page will be populated.
5. In case you’re using Instagram too much, you’ll be sent timely alerts to take a break.
6. Instagram will strictly limit the kind of content and Reels that are shown to you, based on its content filters.

Coming to Parental Controls, parents of teenagers will now get to see who their child has messaged in the past seven days, however, the contents of those messages will be invisible to them. And, they’ll also get to see the topics their teen has chosen to view most often.

As we said, only those above the age of 16 will be able to tweak these settings, while younger teens will need the permission of their parents to make any changes.

Instagram Teen Accounts are being gradually rolled out in the US, the UK, Australia, and Canada. As for the rest of the world, Meta has said that they will start being introduced in January 2025.