Instagram simplifies Teen Account content controls, using Movie ratings as a guide

For over a year now, Instagram has been pushing teen users into a “teen account” experience to prevent them from seeing the content which many parents wouldn’t deem age-appropriate. Today, the platform announced they are further simplifying their content guidance for teens and parents using language more familiar to most – Movie Ratings.

And no, this isn’t a last-ditch attempt to be excluded from the Australian Social Media Ban for kids under 16. The teen accounts have been something Instagram has worked on well before any debate about this potential ban, and these changes will remain effective for 16- and 17-year-old kids who join Instagram even after the Social Media Ban kicks in.

In really simple terms, Instagram is able to detect likely teen accounts based on their usage of the platform, in addition to using the teen account settings for those users known to be teenagers based on the date of birth entered when they joined, or their parents labelling them that way when linking accounts. Teen accounts see a more restrictive Instagram and have following and messaging restrictions on the platform.

However, the company noticed through usage and customer research that parents found the labelling of content and restriction settings confusing. So, they are beginning to roll out a new guidance to serve teen accounts using the US PG-13 movie rating.

For Australians, this sits somewhere between PG and M ratings, and while it isn’t a hard and fast rule, the idea is to give parents a reference as to what content they might be seeing and/ or not seeing by setting this content restriction.

Teens can request to move up the content framework guidelines, but that will require a parental account to be linked and approval for that change.

Likewise, for parents looking to crack down, a more restrictive experience is also available.

In addition to basically rating content and filtering what teens see, Instagram will also remove the possibility of teens following accounts that they’ve found to regularly share age-inappropriate content, and will block search terms like “alcohol” or “gore” from teens.

Parents, or accounts Instagram deems to be likely parents, might also start to see questionnaires after content asking if that content is or is not appropriate for certain age groups – this is basically crowdsourcing ratings for content Instagram may be unsure of using their AI systems.

These changes will begin to roll out today, and will take over a month to reach all teens.

What is Instagram playing at?

To their credit, they have long been working on the experience for younger people – it is, of course, in their interest to get any user on board as soon as possible and make the experience worthwhile.

This isn’t in any way a reaction to Australia’s social media ban; I believe that.

However, what it does show is just what could be possible if we worked proactively with these platforms on making it better for kids, rather than just a blanket ban.

Parents should be given choice.  If I choose to let my teen on, it should be me who has that responsibility and they only get access if linked to my account.

But the Government wants to take parental responsibility away from parents.  Go figure.