By Nethra Sailesh
The Meta-owned social media platform has introduced a new feature- ‘Instagram Teen
Accounts’ in India to make the platform safer. Instagram teen accounts must be an option
selected beforehand which automatically creates a private account.
This new feature means that only followers are authorized to text and send content to the user,
non-followers won’t be able to interact with them. This update also features comment filtration
and limited tagging only by people the user knows/follows. The main goal is to make the
internet and content experience for teens more age -appropriate.
To reduce app usage time, Instagram also kept the feature of sending frequent notifications to
teens, asking them to exit the app after 60 minutes. It will also automatically go into sleep mode
from 10 pm to 7 am.
In their official blog post, Meta has also announced that another feature- will give parents access
to monitor their child’s conversations, set daily time limits, and allow for app blocking for a
certain amount of hours.
Meta has also developed solutions to ensure that children don’t like their age when making
accounts like these. The company has announced that more steps will be taken for additional
verification.
To make the experience better teens will also be allowed to choose topics that they want to see
on their Explore page
Although Meta has made provisions for automatic safety features, there is also a supervision
feature that can be activated that gives the parents/guardians access to the teen’s chats, set
specific timings for app use, set daily time limits, and see the type of content that shows up on
their explore page.
As reported by the Indian Express, India does not have any particular ban or law, unlike
Australia for social media access to children. However, according to the Digital Personal Data
Protection Act 2023, children under 18 require parental consent to access social media in India.
This new feature is aimed at monitoring the child’s digital consumption and addressing concerns
related to cyberbullying, online safety, and inappropriate content.
As reported by Business Today, these changes are also one step towards guiding children to
consume and interact with content and social media responsibly. However, initiatives like these
require constant oversight to be fully successful.
This feature has already been in place in countries like the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia
since last year, with the company hoping to bring it to other social media platforms.