Instagram, facing pressure over child safety online, unveils sweeping changes

Instagram on Tuesday unveiled a sweeping overhaul to boost privacy and limit the intrusive effects of social media on users under 18, as the app faces intense pressure over protecting children online.

Instagram said the accounts of users under 18 will be made private by default in the coming weeks, meaning only followers approved by the account-holder will see their posts. The Meta-owned app plans to turn off notifications to minors between 10pm and 7am to promote sleep. In addition, Instagram will introduce more supervision tools for adults, including a feature that allows parents to see which accounts their teens have recently sent messages to.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri said the new settings and features were intended to address the top concerns parents have about their children online, including inappropriate communication, inappropriate content and excessive screen time.

“We decided to focus on what parents think because they know better what's right for their children than any tech company, any private company, any senator or policymaker or activist or regulator,” he said in an interview. Instagram's new effort, dubbed “Teen Accounts,” was designed to “necessarily default” to an age-appropriate experience for minors.s In the app, he said.

The changes are the most far-reaching set of steps taken by an app to tackle teenagers' use of social media, as scrutiny is placed on young people's experiences online. In recent years, parents and children's groups have warned that Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and other apps have routinely exposed children and teenagers to content that promotes bullying, pedophiles, sexual extortion and self-harm and eating disorders.

In June, US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy called for cigarette labeling on social media to warn of potential mental health risks. And in July, the Senate passed bipartisan legislation called the Kids Online Safety Act to impose safety and privacy requirements for children and teens on social media.

Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, has faced particular criticism over the dangers of social media to young people. Dozens of state attorneys general have filed lawsuits against his company, accusing Meta — which also owns Facebook and WhatsApp — of knowingly hooking children into its apps while minimizing risk. At a congressional hearing on children's online safety in January, lawmakers urged Mr. Zuckerberg to apologize to families whose children have killed themselves after being abused on social media.

“I'm sorry for everything you've gone through,” Mr Zuckerberg told the family at the hearing.

It's unclear how effective Instagram's new changes will be. Meta has promised to protect minors from inappropriate communications and content since at least 2007, when state attorneys general warned that Facebook was saturated with sexual content and enabled adults to solicit teens. Since then, Meta has introduced tools, features and settings to promote youth wellness on its social networks — with varying degrees of success.

In 2021, for example, Instagram announced that it would open new accounts by those who indicate they are private under 16 by default. At the time, the app only allowed young teens to make default changes to public accounts.

During this time, 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds will be able to opt out of the default privacy settings themselves. But Instagram said users under 16 will now need parental permission to view their accounts publicly.

Dr. Megan Moreno, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine who studies teens and problematic social media use, said Instagram's new youth default settings are “significant.”

“They set a higher bar for privacy and confidentiality — and they take some of the burden off the shoulders of teenagers and their parents,” he said.

Yet the changes don't directly address a glaring problem: young people who lie about their age when registering on Instagram. New settings and features are automatically set for account holders who self-identify as minors And while Instagram's terms of service prohibit children under 13 from using the app, “teen accounts” aren't designed to search and remove underage users.

Instagram says it removes minors' accounts when it learns about them. It said teenagers would have to verify their age if they created new accounts with an adult's date of birth to try to avoid the new privacy defaults. The company is also working on technology so it can proactively track down teenagers who set up accounts as adults.

Several children's groups said Instagram's announcement, which came as Congress prepared to adopt the Children's Online Protection Act on Wednesday, appeared to be an attempt to block new federal protections for young people online.

“These are long-missing features that Instagram should have put in place years ago to keep young people safe online,” said Jim Steyer, chief executive of Common Sense Media, a children's advocacy and media rating group. “They're only acting now because they're under pressure from lawmakers, lawyers and the groundswell of public opinion.”

While the overhaul may be well-received by parents, some teenagers — who make up a significant portion of Instagram's user base — may be less pleased. Teen influencers who keep their accounts public to gain new followers may be immune to changes. Nearly half of US teenagers aged 13 to 17 use Instagram at least once a day, according to a Pew Research study last fall, making it the fourth most popular social network among America's youth, behind YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat.

The security measures could hurt Mater's business in the short term, as the company needs new users to grow and younger users to stay relevant. But now by making these changes, Instagram is also trying to court the next generation of young people to use social media while trying to reduce the risks they may face online.

Mr. Mosseri acknowledged that the new security measures could affect Meta's bottom line and popularity among teenagers.

“It's definitely going to hurt teen growth and teen engagement, and there's a lot of risk involved,” he said. “But fundamentally, I want us to be willing to take risks, push ourselves and make progress.”

Other social media apps have also made changes for younger users. In 2021, TikTok made registered accounts private by default for users aged 13 to 15. It disabled direct messages for those younger teens

Instagram's latest settings and features will roll out starting Tuesday, with new accounts automatically placed in private mode registered by people who identify themselves as minors. The app said it will soon start creating personal accounts for minors in the US, Canada, Australia and Britain.

Meta said it will restrict teens on Instagram from being able to send direct messages to people they don't already follow. The company said it will show less content on their main Instagram feed to people they don't follow and prevent them from being tagged by other people's accounts they aren't connected to.

The new options give parents overseeing their teens' accounts more insight into how their kids use the apps, Instagram said. This includes a feature that enables a parent to see the topics of their child's posts that their child has chosen to see more of, as well as the accounts of people their child has recently messaged. To protect user privacy, however, parents will not be able to see the content of their children's messages.

While parents can use the information to start important conversations with their children, experts say the feature can also create tension for vulnerable teenagers whose politics or gender identity may conflict with their parents' views.

Dr. Moreno, who is also the medical co-director of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health, said she was looking forward to seeing how teenagers react to Instagram's changes. While many young people may be relieved that their accounts are made private, she noted, others may find it difficult to get parental permission to change default settings.

“Their voice will be really important in determining how meaningful these changes are,” he said.

Mr Mosseri said it was difficult for the company to develop new features as it tried to balance security concerns with personal privacy.

“The thing for me about online safety and wellness and this whole world of social media is there are trade-offs,” he said. “We think we've found a decent balance. But I'm sure we're going to get a bunch of feedback.”