Instagram changes for Aussie Teens – new restrictions on content and messaging

Brace yourselves, your teenagers are about to get a bit grumpy about their Instagram suddenly changing. From today new users signing up to Instagram who are teenagers will be placed into the new “Teen Account” category, and from next week Teens already using Instagram will begin moving into Teen accounts.

This is not an Australian feature being introduced in response to the current debate in this country, instead this is a feature Instagram has been actively working on for some time, Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri telling EFTM  “it’s been upwards of a year since we started working on it.”

It’s the same Instagram, but for Teens it comes with a range of restrictions designed to better support parents – frankly, as a parent, this new Teen Account mode appears to be about forcing teens into restrictions that parents haven’t bothered to use or enable for their kids.

Initially this will all be based around date of birth, but Instagram say by early next year they will be testing technology that proactively finds teens that have an adult birthday listed and move them into Teen accounts.

That’s not as easy as it may seem, as no doubt the Australian Government is about to find out. Adam Mosseri told me that age verification is very, very hard, saying “Verifying or even just understanding age at scale is just tough. If you wanna get a sense for how tough we can send you 50 teen accounts and you can try to look at all of them and see if you can figure out who’s 15 and who’s 16. It’s just a hard problem to solve. That said, we have a responsibility to do all that we can and we’re getting pretty sophisticated.”

If you have teenagers on Instagram, here’s what they can expect to change when they are moved to “Teen account” status:

• Private account: They will need to accept new followers and those who are not followers cannot see their profile content or interact with them.
• Messaging restrictions: The strictest messaging settings will be turned on, this means they can only message people they follow or are connected to.
• Sensitive content restrictions: The most restrictive content setting will be turned on, meaning things like adult themed content, fighting or cosmetic procedures will not be shown.
• Limited interactions: Tagging and mentions can only be done by people who are connected, plus anti-bullying measures which filter out words and phrases from DMs and comments will also be enabled.
• Time limit reminders: Pop up warnings after 60 minutes of use will happen by default.
• Sleep mode enabled: A new sleep mode will enable at 10pm until 7am – muting notifications and sending auto-replies to any DMs.

Teenagers will also get access to a new feature, which asks them to select topics they want to see more of in Explore to try to shape the algorithm in their favour.

For Parents, there have always been controls, but this new move really forces the hand of parents and kids – though Instagram talk about it as being easier for parents. The fact is, it means parents need to engage on this stuff, need to setup parental link with their kids on Instagram because if your teen under 16 wants to change any of those settings, they need a parent linked to their account.

Over 16’s can make the changes themselves, but if a parental account is linked, the same process as under 16’s applies.

Parents can see who teens have been chatting with, set daily time limits and block teens use of Instagram at certain times, as well as getting a sense of the topics your teen is viewing.

With billions of users, a change like this won’t likely hit the bottom line, but Mosseri does admit it will likely impact growth in the Teen age group, saying “We are definitely going to see a loss of teen engagement and teen growth. So the number of teens that use Instagram relative to what would’ve been otherwise, that is going to happen. “

“I have to assume it’s good for our business over the long run over the next five or 10 years, but it’s going to be difficult and it’s going to hurt over the short run. But we’re going in knowing that and our bet is we’ll feel good about it in five years.”