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When it comes to screen time, parents and carers have long been faced with the challenge to monitor, limit, and navigate children’s media consumption. They are under public pressure from society whose debates about children and technology are overwrought with screen time anxieties, idealistic expectations, and rigid rules that often fail to consider the complexity and reality of family life. Parents also experience personal pressure when navigating through an emotionally charged landscape seeking the best for their child’s well-being.
To date, parents had to bear the main responsibility for their children’s social media interactions with not much support from the platforms themselves. Now however, Instagram is responding to public pressure and updating it's policies to actively encourage parental supervision through the app. Within the next months all Australian children are to be placed on restricted Teen Accounts by Meta, but does this go far enough? Jonathan Haidt, in his book, Anxious Generation, outlines the recent research that demonstrates the detrimental effect social media has had on a generation of teenagers' mental health.
Teen Accounts to be introduced to young users
The new “teen accounts” will apply to all users under the age of 18, including those who are already on Instagram and those who create a new account. After the update, 16- and 17-year-old users will be able to manually change the app back to their preferred settings, but 13- to 15-year-old users will need parental approval to make this change. Children under 13 years are not allowed to sign up to the major social media platforms (incl. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok).
Accounts are set to private by default
Under the new rules, teenage Instagram users will have private accounts by default. The new accounts settings are built on over 30 well-being and parental oversight tools, which are designed to bring more peace of mind to parents by ensuring that their teens are having safe experiences online. They will be implemented everywhere in Australia, the US, the UK, Canada and the EU this year and around the world starting in January 2025.
The 5 biggest changes in Teen Accounts
Stricter messaging settings: The revision will allow teen users to receive messages only from people they are already connected to.
Close content control: The shift limits the types of “sensitive” content teens can see on their Explore page and in Reels.
Restricted interactions: Instagram will limit who can tag teens in photos or mention them in comments to only people they follow.
Time limitations: Teen users will receive time limit reminders after 1 hour on the app each day. The app will also default to “sleep mode”, muting notifications and sending auto-replies to direct messages between 10 pm and 7 am
Parental supervision tool: Parents will be allowed to check their teens recently messaged accounts, set total daily time limits, block teens from using Instagram during specific times, and see their selected content topics on the app.
What are the limitations of Meta’s new teen feature?
Instagram is taking more responsibility to prevent teens from age-inappropriate content and communication by giving parents a new oversight tool. However, it does not conduct formal parent verification and can therefore not assure that it is actually the parents who are monitoring teen accounts, or perhaps an older friend. Neither does it prevent teens from lying about their age when creating a new account. A future plan is therefore to implement AI technology to identify teen accounts with wrongly listed adult birthdates.
It is important for Parents to continue to monitor and restrict social media use, while these changes minimise risk for teens, they do not remove them altogether, parental monitoring is still required. These changes are an opportune time for parents to open up dialogue with their children about their social media and screen use. Remember, it is still up to the parents and carers to say ‘no’ to Instagram for their children. We suggest that parents enlist help from other parents in their community to resist allowing children onto social media as long as you can, at least until they reach 14, to create a 'community of support' to say no to social media use for children.