Meta announces significant changes to Instagram Teen Accounts

Last year, Instagram announced Teen Accounts, which reimagined the Instagram experience for teens – and their parents – with built-in restrictions on who can contact teens, the content they see, and their time spent on the app. Since then, 97% of teens ages 13-15 have kept their default restrictions on and nearly all parents surveyed (94%) say Teen Accounts are helpful for parents.

Today, Meta announced the most significant update to Teen Accounts since they launched last year, building on the automatic protections already provided by Teen Accounts to hundreds of millions of teens globally. The changes will begin rolling out in Canada, the U.S., U.K and Australia starting today.  

Key highlights from the announcement include:

• Instagram is revamping Teen Accounts to be guided by PG-13 movie ratings - meaning teens will see the kind of content they’d expect to see in a PG-13 movie.
• Teens will be automatically placed in this updated experience - and can’t opt-out without a parent’s permission.
• This will apply across Instagram - from recommendations to Feed and Stories, comments and Search results. It will also apply to entire accounts - so teens won’t be able to follow or interact with accounts that regularly share 18+ content.  
• Instagram is also offering a new, stricter setting for parents who want a more restrictive experience for their teen.
• Why are we doing this? While Teen Accounts already have built-in protections, we understand that inappropriate content remains a top concern for parents - and that our existing content settings can feel confusing. We wanted to more closely align with an external standard parents are more familiar with, to provide clarity and peace of mind that when their teen is on Instagram, they’re seeing content similar to what they’d see in a PG-13 movie by default.

To learn more link here.