Greater safety for all teenagers who will no longer have free access to unsuitable content, making the platform accessible even to the youngest children: this is the idea of Instagramamong the most popular social networks of Meta, which introduces what are called “teen account“. The restriction will apply to children aged under sixteen years of age who may have to obtain permission from family members to change the settings.
What changes
In fact, the protagonists are teenagers and their families: the former will be automatically inserted into teenager accounts with special limitations on who can contact them and the contents they can search for and view. “Teens on Instagram will automatically be placed into more restricted privacy settings restrictiveappropriate for their age. These settings apply to both teens who already use Instagram and new users”, explains a press release from Meta.
Young people under the age of sixteen, as mentioned, will need parental permission to change what was initially established: anyone over this age will be able to independently change any type of setting “unless their account is supervised by a parent or guardian, in which case the parent’s permission will be required to make changes”.
The main news
Here are the main new features:
- as regards the private accounts with restrictions, teens will be able to choose whether to accept new followers, and people who don’t follow them won’t be able to see their content or interact with them;
- the restrictions on messaging they provide that you can only receive messages from people you follow or are connected to;
- the restriction on Sensitive content will eliminate videos of arguments and violence from their viewing as well as automatically activate the anti-bullying function to filter out every word or phrase;
- the time limits will ensure that kids receive notifications prompting them to exit the app after sixty minutes every day;
- there sleep mode active from 10pm to 7am where night notifications will be deactivated with automatic replies to direct messages.
Where the need arises
Meta says that the new feature now operational on Instagram is designed to give parents the peace of mind of knowing that their children are safe even in the sea of the Internet. The very young will have at their disposal a function, created specifically, that will allow them to select the topics of greatest interest in “Explore” with related recommendations so as to focus on the fun and positive content they prefer.
The release date
Meta announces that teen accounts will be operational “within sixty days in the United States
United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, and will begin in the European Union later this year. Teens around the world will start getting access to teen accounts in January.”