Facing backlash from parents over teens using Instagram to seek adult content, Meta, the app’s parent company, announced it will implement a safety system for young audiences using barriers like age-gating to prevent teens from interacting with adult content that includes drugs, violence and sex.
The new settings follow the PG-13 movie rating system, which provides parental guidance about things like violence and sex in movies.
Users under 18 will be placed in the 13+ setting and can only opt out with their parents permission, teen accounts already blocked the recommendation of sexually suggestive content, graphic images, smoking and drinking. The new PG-13 guidelines will further tighten restrictions.
In announcing the change, Meta said in a statement, “While of course there are differences between movies and social media, we made these changes so teens’ experience in the 13+ setting feels closer to the Instagram equivalent of watching a PG-13 movie.”
Students had mixed feelings about the change
“I think that these new accounts are a good idea,” senior Julia Roof “Instagram especially can have content that hurts more than it helps, especially for younger people. Being able to create an account monitored by parents for children would help to cause less damage.”
Senior Alex Kane said parents should do more to monitor their kid’s activity.
“Kids really shouldn’t be watching public executions, which have been posted on Instagram,” Kane said. “But at the end of the day, I feel that it should be a parents job to monitor the apps their child uses, and to prevent harm to said child by reviewing age related content policies.”
A study released in September reveals 47% of teens had encountered unsafe content and received unwanted messages in a month, and 37% of teens ages 13-15 had experienced the same issues on a weekly basis.
Former Meta employee, Jason Sattizahn testified against Meta and said if Instagram does follow up on their plans to reduce teen and child presence in the app will result in lessening the amount of engagement and monetization.
Meta criticized his claims in the testimony and said they were “based on selectively leaked internal documents, picked specifically to craft a false narrative.”
Instagram said “it already uses artificial intelligence and in-app reports to help determine whether users are under 18 and, indeed, under 13, its minimum age,” and in January, they will begin using AI tools to preemptively detect teens and stop them from making fake adult accounts.
KOSA (Kids Online Safety Act) a law passed in 2024, states that social media platforms have a duty to care for younger audiences. This responsibility applies to big platforms like Facebook and Threads, who are also owned by Meta.
However, the law isn’t actually threatening Meta because it has no direct punishments like fines or suspension of platforms who ignore it. And it’s caused more worry. Now, people are against the bill stating it’s an attempt at surveillance, as to censor or target certain communities.
