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ICYMI . . . Meta Launched Instagram Teen Accounts

Six things to know now about new protections on a platform used by a majority of teens ages 13 to 17.

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Unless you’ve had your nose in your phone, you’ve probably heard that Meta rolled out new Instagram teen accounts last month.

Aimed at users under age 18, the protections include restrictions on messaging and sensitive content, required privacy settings, and time limit reminders.

AU Now turned to SPA professor Brian Hughes, cofounder and associate director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab, to learn more about the new safeguards.

Here are six things to know about the latest efforts to protect youth online:

1. Instagram—like other social media platforms—negatively affects teen mental health.

Last year, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released an advisory identifying social media as a main driver of the youth mental health crisis.

That comes on the heels of a 2021 Wall Street Journal investigation that revealed that Meta’s own research indicated that Instagram is harmful to a sizable percentage of its millions of young users—particularly teen girls.

“Overall, the harms we’re talking about have to do with things like body image, self-image, self-esteem, and sexual exploitation,” Hughes said.

2. Growing pressure on Meta and other tech players helps explain why the company rolled out the protections now.

On Capitol Hill, the Kids Online Safety Act—legislation that would require social media platforms across the country to institute the highest possible privacy and safety settings for users 17 and under—is currently in the House after passing in the Senate.

Meta is also facing lawsuits accusing the company of failing to address child safety and mental health concerns.

“Regardless of the industry, one of the best ways you can get corporations to self-regulate is to threaten them with government regulation,” Hughes said.

3. Instagram teen accounts are a step—albeit a small one—in the right direction.

A majority of teens ages 13 to 17 are on Instagram. The ubiquity of the platform among youth makes any increased safety measures—largely unprecedented for tech platforms—significant.

“I’m highly critical of Meta, but [we] should give them credit for doing some good,” Hughes said. “I think regardless of their motives, we are in a better place now with these teen accounts than we were without them.”

4. Meta’s new safety protections reflect what parents should already be doing. 

While society has accepted social media as a part of our lives, Hughes said the only way to truly reduce its risk among young people is to stay off the platforms entirely.

“These are all Band-Aid solutions,” Hughes said. “The problem is that [social media platforms] are vast volumes of visual information. A networked communication technology that can theoretically connect anyone with anyone else at any time through any commercially available device is itself a social problem. The harms, in general, outweigh the benefits.”

5. Teens remain vulnerable to exploitation by their peers.

Instagram Teens makes it more difficult for adults to reach minors online, but the platform remains vulnerable to nefarious artificial intelligence—particularly by underage users.

“One of the worst new problems that we have been seeing in the lab is the use of AI to produce explicit images of girls, frequently by boys in their classes,” Hughes said. “That is not something Instagram Teens can prevent. I don’t want parents to be lulled into a false sense of security by these settings.”

6. This could prompt more social media protections.

Last month, TikTok partnered with the Family Online Safety Institute to launch the Digital Safety Partnership for Families, which helps set digital boundaries. Reddit has also instituted more protections for younger users, Hughes said.

“If they could just be a little better about restricting Not Safe for Work-identified boards from youth, they could be a leader in this space,” Hughes said.