Instagram releases Teen Accounts with built-in privacy, parental controls

Instagram on Tuesday announced the launch of new privacy and parental controls for teenagers on the platform to address rising concerns about the negative impacts of social media and give parents more control over their children’s online experience.

Instagram and Facebook parent Meta said the new Teen Accounts would automatically set to private with the need to approve new followers, and include new restrictions on messaging, sensitive content and interactions with users. It will also include new time limit reminders and a sleep mode feature.

Antigone Davis, Meta’s head of global safety, spoke with FOX Business Network’s Madison Alworth in an exclusive interview about the new Teen Accounts and related safety features.

“It’s really a game changer for parents,” Davis said in the interview. “And with this launch, tens of millions of teens will have an entirely new experience on the platform. What we’ll be doing is putting them into automatic protections if they’re under the age of 18 and if they’re under the age of 16, a parent will have to give them permission in order to change those settings.”

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The teen view of Instagram’s notification about the Teen Accounts safeguards. (Courtesy of Meta / Fox News)

Davis said the three biggest concerns for parents are who their teens are connecting with on the platform, what content they’re seeing and how much time they’re spending on the phone. It will also give parents the ability to see who their teen has been talking with in the past seven days – though it won’t show parents the content of the messages in that conversation.

“I think one of the things to understand is that there’s someone else on the other side of that message. So we wouldn’t be just sharing the teen’s content, but we’d actually be sharing somebody else’s content, which creates real privacy concerns,” Davis said. 

She noted that parents can use the tool to have a conversation with their teen if they see a significant number of messages or those messages are occurring outside the timeframe they’re permitted to use the app.

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A view of the parental controls for younger teens in Instagram’s Teen Accounts experience. (Courtesy of Meta / Fox News)

Davis explained that Instagram’s Teen Accounts give parents the ability to set daily time limits for Instagram usage, block them from using the platform at night or within specific time periods, as well as seeing the content and topics that their teen is engaging with on the platform.

“Teens are developing their, what they call executive functioning skills. These are the skills that sort of allow you to regulate your own behavior, are still developing, that’s part of that whole…