Teens on Instagram won’t be able to broadcast Live to their friends without getting parental permission first, as Meta amps up youth safety features for its Teen Accounts across all its platforms.
In addition to stronger restrictions on going Live for youth under the age of 16, the platform now requires teens get parental consent to turn off content moderation filters that blur images containing suspected nudity in direct messages — adding to a suite of safety features announced last year.
And it’s not just for Instagram now: The parent company will also begin rolling out Teen Accounts to Facebook and Messenger today (April 8). Parental supervision for Teen Accounts can be accessed on Meta’s Family Center.
Five years of remote work changed workplace accessibility. Employees with disabilities will feel its loss.
Teen Accounts have quickly become Meta’s flagship youth product, said Tara Hopkins, global director of public policy at Instagram. “Everything our youth teams are building is being built under our Best Interests of the Child Framework. Then it goes through a multi-framework youth review, and finally it’s looked at through Teen Accounts,” Hopkins explained to Mashable. “We’re going to be increasingly using Teen Accounts as an umbrella, moving all of our [youth safety] settings into it. Anything that parents are adjacent to, that we think parents are going to be worried about or have questions about will be moved under Teen Accounts.”
Mashable Light Speed
Parents can now supervise Teen Accounts on Facebook and Messenger.
Credit: Meta
Parents and teens will be notified of settings changes.
Credit: Meta
According to Meta, more than 54 million teens have been moved into a restricted Teen Account since the initial rollout, with 97 percent of users under the age of 16 keeping the platform’s default security settings. Teens 13-15 have stronger restrictions, including requiring parental permission to make any adjustments to the platform’s youth accounts. Meta users aged 16 years and older have more flexibility to change their settings at will.
Meta is cleaning up its youth safety image
The company launched Teen Accounts for Instagram in September, part of an app-wide overhaul of its teen safety offerings that centralized security and content restrictions under one platform banner. Teen Accounts are automatically set to private, have limited messaging capabilities, and built-in screen time controls — Instagram also limits (but doesn’t ban) ad targeting for…
