Instagram CEO Unveils New ‘Teen Accounts’ on GMA With More Restrictions On Young Social Media Users
Screenshot via @GMA on Twitter/X
Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America to introduce new features aimed directly at protecting the app’s younger users.
In a segment with GMA co-host Michael Strahan, Mosseri outlined how Instagram’s new “Teen Accounts” will incorporate more parental supervision over their children’s app use. Strahan also asked how some of the more “crafty” young users would still need their parents’ permission for some of Instagram’s features:
Mosseri: They’re an automatic set of protections for teens that try and proactively address the top concerns that we’ve heard from parents about teens online, things like who can contact them, what content they see, and how much time they spend on their device. And we’ve built things like making sure these are all private by default. There’s restrictions on who can message your teen. There’s content restrictions so that they see less inappropriate content. And even a reminder to leave Instagram once you hit an hour for the day, all without requiring any involvement from the parent.
Strahan: Would definitely seems like a game changer, seems to put the parents in more control, or in control. But how, you know, we have some crafty kids out there. How are you preventing these kids from lying about their age to get around these features?
Mosseri: It’s a great question. Now, we’re starting by rolling this out automatically to the tens of millions of teens that have already told us they are teens. But we know that teens try to work around restrictions from time to time, so we’ve worked on ways to protect against that. Things like requiring a teen to verify their age if they try to change their birthday, things like not allowing someone to create a new account with a different birthday on the same device. And we’re working on ways to automatically detect those who might be lying about their age and then bring protections to those accounts as well.
These restrictions apply to Instagram users 17 and younger. Mosseri also emphasized that these features were made with the users’ parents in mind:
I think we have a responsibility to make sure that Instagram is a safe place for teens to explore their interests and connect with their friends. But this change is really focused not on any litigations, but on parental concerns. We’ve really decided that parents should be our North Star. They’ve been clear on what they’re most concerned about, and we’re trying to proactively address those concerns without requiring their involvement. But if a parent wants to get involved, we’ve also built some robust tools to allow them to shape the experience into what’s most appropriate for their teen, because at the end of the day, a parent always knows what’s best for their child.
Mosseri told Strahan that the new Instagram Teen Accounts will be rolled out this week and will be available nationwide in 60 days. Teen users will receive a message upon opening the app explaining the new features and settings. Users who are under 16 will need parental permission to change some of the settings.
