After YouTube Kids, Meta launches 'Teens Accounts' for Instagram

Amid the rise of mobile parenting, Meta has rolled out Instagram Teen Accounts, designed to give teens under 16 a safer online experience. Automatically applying protections, these accounts limit who can contact them and what content they see, providing parents with peace of mind about the social media interactions of their children.

“We’ll automatically place teens into Teen Accounts, and teens under 16 will need a parent’s permission to change any of these settings to be less strict,” read the official September 17 Meta blog.

“This new experience is designed to support parents better and give them peace of mind that their teens are safe with the right protections in place,” the blog added.

Instagram, hugely popular in India with 362.9 million users, is part of Meta’s family of apps, which reported 3.29 billion daily active users in June. Estimates suggest 8% of Instagram’s users are under 17, while Gen Z (ages 18-24) represents the largest group, making up nearly 32% of the platform's user base, according to Statista.

Meta's new initiative for teens is similar to the YouTube Kids platform, launched by YouTube in 2015. Introduced in India in 2016, YouTube Kids curates age-appropriate content, supporting cautious mobile parenting. The platform currently has over 500 million downloads on the Android Play Store.

These accounts come with automatic protections, which restrict who can contact teens and the content they access while allowing them to explore their interests. Parents can control whether teens under 16 can adjust these safeguards, ensuring a balance between safety and exploration.

Key features of new Instagram Teens Accounts

• Choose what teens want to see on their Explore feed: The teens' accounts will allow teens to select the topics shown on their Explore feed and their recommendations.

• Default private accounts: Teens will have to accept new followers and people who don’t follow them can’t see their content or interact with them. This applies to existing and new teen users below 16 and users under 18 who are signing up.

• Messaging restrictions: Only people the teens follow or are already connected to can send messages or tag them online. The most restrictive version of Meta’s anti-bullying feature will also be turned on.

• Sensitive content restrictions: With the most restrictive setting of sensitive content control, the teens' Explore feed and reels section will exclude all sensitive content including content showing fights and cosmetic procedures. Offensive words and phrases too will be filtered out of teens’ comments and DM requests.

• Time limit reminders and Sleep Mode enabled: Notifications about disconnecting from the app after 60 minutes every day will be shown to the teens automatically, aside from a sleep mode which will be activated between 10 PM and 7 AM, thus muting all notifications overnight and sending auto-replies to DMs.

Parents of teens aged 16 or above can activate parental supervision on Instagram for greater oversight. This feature allows parents to approve setting changes, monitor their teen's activity and interests, and set time limits for app usage.

Furthermore, Meta says that to prevent teens from lying about their age on Instagram, the company will mandate age verification in more instances, such as when they register with a false adult birthday, in addition to developing technology to identify accounts likely belonging to teens, even if they claim to be adults, and automatically applying the protections of Teen Accounts. This initiative is set to be tested in the US early next year.

“Today (September 17), we’ll start placing teens who sign up for Instagram into Teen Accounts, and we’ll notify teens already using Instagram about these changes so we can begin moving them into Teen Accounts next week,” the blog read.

Meta plans to roll out Teen Accounts to users in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia within two months, with a European Union launch later this year. The feature will reach the rest of the world, including India, by January. Additionally, Meta intends to introduce Teen Accounts on its other platforms by next year.