picture of Instagram Younger Teen View of Settings Change

Introducing Instagram Teen Accounts

Protections for teens, peace of mind for parents

Today Instagram is introducing Teen Accounts:

A new protected experience for teens, guided by parents. Starting today, teens on Instagram will automatically be placed in Teen Accounts, which have built-in limits on who can contact them and the content they see, and more ways to connect and explore their interests.

What’s changing?

Teens on Instagram will automatically be placed into age-appropriate, protective settings. These settings apply to teens already using Instagram and to teens signing up to the app. Teens under 16 will need their parent’s permission to change these settings. Teens over 16 can change these settings themselves unless their account is supervised by a parent or guardian, in which case they will need their parent’s permission to change their setting.

These include:

Private accounts: Teens will be placed in private accounts. Teens need to accept new followers, and people who don’t follow them can’t see their content or interact with them. We won’t adjust the account settings of teens over 16.
Messaging restrictions: Teens will be placed in the strictest messaging defaults, meaning that they can only be messaged by people they follow or are already connected to.
Sensitive content restrictions: Teens will automatically be placed in more restrictive content settings, which limits the content they see from accounts they don’t follow (e.g. in Reels or Explore). Specifically, teens will be placed in the “Less” setting of our Sensitive Content Control.
Limiting interactions: Teens will automatically be placed in settings that mean they can only be tagged or mentioned in content by people they follow. We will also turn on our Hidden Words feature for teens, meaning offensive words or phrases will automatically be filtered from their comments and DM.
Break reminders: Teens will now be encouraged to close the app after 60 minutes. “Daily Limit”—which replaces our Take A Break feature—prompts teens to leave Instagram after they’ve spent 60 minutes on the app. Teens over 16 can extend the time between prompts if they’d prefer to, but younger teens will need their parent’s permission to do so.
Introducing Sleep Mode: Teens will now be placed in “Sleep Mode” between 10pm and 7am. Sleep Mode— which replaces our existing Quiet Mode and Night Nudges features—stops teens from receiving notifications at night, so they can focus on sleep. Parents can choose to stop their teens from using Instagram at night altogether (or at another time of their choosing) within our parental supervision tool
Choose topics you’re interested in: Teens can choose
to see more content about topics they indicate they’re interested in, for example, sports, arts, animals or hobbies. The topics they select will show up in places where Instagram recommends content such as Explore and in-Feed Recommendations. In addition, teens’ chosen topics will be listed at the top of their Explore page and they can tap on them to see a Page dedicated to that topic.
Introducing new ways for parents to see who their teen has been messaging: In addition to these new settings and features for teens, we’re adding an additional feature to our parental supervision tools on Instagram. Now, parents will be able to see who their teen has recently been messaging so they can have conversations with their teens about how to be safe in direct messaging. Parents will not be able to see the messages themselves.
Introducing new ways for parents to see topics their teen is looking at: Now, parents can view the age-appropriate topics their teen has chosen to see content from, based on their interests.

How do teens obtain their parent’s permission?

- Younger or unsupervised teens attempting to change these settings to less protective settings will need to request their parent’s permission. If a teen already has a supervised account, their parent will be notified of the request and can approve or deny it. Younger unsupervised teens will need to set up supervision to make a request.
- Once supervision is established, parents can approve
  and deny their teens’ requests or they can allow teens to manage their settings themselves. Soon, parents will also be able to change these settings directly to a more protective state.
- If parents want more oversight over their older teen’s (16+) experiences, they simply have to set up parental supervision. Then, they can approve any changes to these settings, irrespective of their teen’s age.

Why do younger teens and older teens have different experiences?

• We consulted with experts, parents and teens to understand what makes the most sense for teens of differing ages and maturity levels. Younger and older teens have different needs, and we’ve tried to be mindful of that when designing Teen Accounts. You can read much more detail about our approach here.

Instagram Teen Accounts

Won’t teens just lie about their age to prevent these changes?

Teens may lie about their age to get around these protections so we’re requiring them to verify their age in new ways, like if they attempt to use a new account with an adult birthday.
We’re also building technology to proactively find accounts that belong to teens and automatically place them in protected, age-appropriate settings.
This technology will allow us to proactively find accounts that belong to teens, even if the account lists an adult birthday. We’ll start testing this change in the US early next year.
You can read much more detail about the changes we’re making here.

When will Teen Accounts be available globally?

Today, 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.
We plan to place teens into Teen Accounts within 60 days in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, and teens around the world will start to get Teen Accounts in January.
This is a big update that requires us to fundamentally change the Instagram experience
of millions of teens. It’s essential that these new protections are applied correctly and that parents and teens understand how they work, so we’re taking the necessary time to get this right.

How do you know if someone is a parent or guardian?

- We’re working to minimize people from setting up supervision relationships improperly. Parental supervision on Instagram is opt-in, and requires both a teen and a parent or guardian to agree to the experience.
- We take a number of steps to confirm that someone is eligible to supervise a teen’s account. These steps include making sure an account that is being supervised cannot supervise another account and limiting the number of accounts that a parent or guardian can supervise.