Meta brings Insta Teen Accounts to India with greater parental control, highest safety mode

New Delhi, Feb 11 (PTI) Meta on Tuesday announced it is expanding Instagram Teen Accounts to India that will ensure built-in protection for young users of this cohort, with features that limit unwanted interactions, enhance privacy settings, provide greater parental oversight, and places teens automatically and, by default, in the highest safety settings.

To ensure that teens receive protection and do not bypass age restrictions, Instagram is strengthening age verification measures, Meta said adding since some young users may misrepresent their age, additional verification steps will be required in certain situations, say, when someone attempts to create an account with an adult birth date.

The announcement comes amid concerns globally and, indeed in India about harmful effects of social media on teens and young impressionable minds. Last month, the Indian government released the draft Digital Personal Data Protection Rules that propose to make parent’s verifiable consent and identification mandatory for creation of child's user account on online or social media platforms.

"We’re expanding Instagram Teen Accounts to India to ensure built-in protections for teens and reassure parents of their teen’s safe experience. Teens are automatically placed in the highest safety settings, with ways to prevent age misrepresentation and sensitive content restrictions to create a secure and age-appropriate online space," Meta said.

Parents can approve changes for teens under 16, monitor recent contacts, set screen time limits, and restrict app use during certain hours, it further said.

Teen accounts are designed to create a more secure and age-appropriate space for teens online. With built-in protections, Teen Accounts limit unwanted interactions, enhance privacy settings, and provide parents with greater oversight, ensuring a safer social media experience for young users.

"In an era where digital interactions shape young minds, ensuring their safety online has never been more critical," it said.

The social media giant admitted that parents, educators, and policymakers alike have voiced concerns over issues like cyberbullying, exposure to harmful content, and privacy risks.

"Instagram’s new Teen Accounts address these concerns by automatically placing all teens in the highest safety settings, empowering them with better tools to navigate the digital world securely," it said.

Natasha Jog, Director, Public Policy India at Instagram said creating a safer and more responsible digital environment is a top priority at Meta.

"With the expansion of Instagram Teen Accounts to India, we are strengthening protections, enhancing content controls, and empowering parents, while ensuring a safer experience for teens," Jog said.

According to the company, Teen account protections are specifically designed to tackle key concerns parents have, such as who their teens interact with online, the type of content they are exposed to, and how they manage their time on the platform.

These safeguards are enabled by default, and for users under 16, any adjustments to make settings less restrictive would require parental nod.

For instance, by default, teen accounts are set to private, meaning they must approve new followers, and non-followers cannot view or interact with their content. This applies to all users under 16 (both existing and new) and those under 18 when signing up.

Teens will automatically be placed in the most restrictive setting, limiting their exposure to sensitive content, such as depictions of physical fights or promotions of cosmetic procedures, in areas like Explore and Reels.

Teens can only be tagged or mentioned by people they follow. Additionally, the strictest version of the anti-bullying feature, Hidden Words, will be enabled by default to filter out offensive language in comments and DM requests.

Teens will receive notifications prompting them to exit the app after 60 minutes of daily usage.

Sleep mode will be enabled from 10 PM to 7 AM, muting notifications and automatically sending replies to DMs overnight. For parents, Teen Accounts provide supervision tools that allow them to monitor and manage their teen’s experience, including approving changes to safety settings and setting daily screen time limits.

For teens under 16, any changes to make settings less restrictive will require parental approval. Parents can also enable supervision for older teens (16+) at any time, allowing them to review and approve changes to their teen’s safety settings.

"Soon, parents will have the ability to directly adjust these settings to provide even stronger protections," it said.

While Teen Accounts come with automatic safeguards, parents who want additional control will now be able to access new supervision features, including monitoring recent conversations, setting daily time limits, Blocking Instagram during specific hours.

Alongside age verification, Instagram is also enhancing content protections to ensure teens areexposed to only age-appropriate material. PTI MBI ANU

Source: PTI