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Meta’s stricter rules for teens on Instagram are a good start toward a safer user experience. But experts say the new rules also raise questions about what else social media companies will do to protect young people.
Of Tuesday’s announcementAccording to Philip Mai, senior researcher and co-director of the Social Media Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University, Meta meets the demands that many parents have been asking for for more than a decade.
The teen account features, which include accounts set to private by default, limits on “sensitive content” in their feeds and notifications turned off at night, appear to address long-standing concerns from parents, including who is allowed to communicate with their children, what topics teens are exposed to and overuse of the app.
“This has been a long time coming and I’m glad they’re rolling something like this out. But as always with a new feature like this, the devil is in the details,” Mai said.
Instagram is introducing new teen accounts with improved parental controls and privacy features, but some parents say Meta needs to do more to make the platform safe for young users.
Anyone under 18 who signs up for Instagram will be given a teen account by default. People under 16 will also need parental permission to change security settings. (Teens with existing accounts in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia will be subject to the new restrictions over the next 60 days.)
Mai is interested in how Instagram initially verifies age and identity.
Currently, new account users can ask others to consent on their behalf, upload proof of identity, or take a video selfie that will be analyzed by a third-party AI facial recognition service. According to MetaUploaded IDs will be deleted within 30 days and video selfies will be deleted after analysis.
Mai pointed out that each method could easily be circumvented by teenagers. The methods also raise further questions, he said, including the implications of identity data stored online for any length of time or mistakes made with facial recognition.
“I expect that over the next 12 months we’ll hear a lot of start-up issues and a few scandals here and there, where things haven’t gone to plan or things have come up that [Meta] “I didn’t expect it,” he said.
With ongoing lawsuits accusing social media companies of harming young people, and new online safety legislation being proposed in the US, UK, Europe and Canada, Mai predicts that other social media platforms will soon follow Instagram’s lead and implement new measures to protect young users.
Parents are still responsible for supervision
Teen accounts on Instagram are automatically set to private. This means that young people can only exchange messages with users they approve or have previously had contact with. This measure is intended to block attempts by strangers to communicate with them.
“We see a lot of situations where not only are adults connecting with children on the platform, but where individuals are also using the platform to promote sexualized images of children,” said Stephen Sauer, director of cybersecurity at the Canadian Centre for Child Protection in Winnipeg.
He believes the new restrictions will help stop incoming messages from strangers. But with so many changes related to parental controls and monitoring, he believes Meta is still placing the lion’s share of responsibility on parents instead of taking stronger measures themselves against bad actors — like a suspicious account sending out a thousand friend requests a day.
“They will move on to making these band-aid solutions and not look at a wholesale re-engineering of the device to make sure it meets … the protections that are needed for children,” Sauer said.
Social media safety lecturer Paul Davies is in favour of any increase in protections for teenage users, as countless children have bypassed what came before and are already on Instagram. That’s why he’s a big advocate for ongoing education and parental guidance to help children really understand the platforms they’re using.
An important lesson: the value of approving “real human followers” and not “people you think you know.” [or] “You probably know.”
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If your child currently has hundreds of followers, Davies says it’s like having a public account, even if Instagram eventually transitions existing teen accounts to private, because all those other hundreds of followers can connect with them.
He encourages parents to build “a healthy, transparent relationship with their child” when it comes to social media, where kids feel comfortable seeking support and asking questions without feeling judged or embarrassed.
New restrictions meet with frustration
Some Toronto students reacted with outrage to Tuesday’s news of the new restrictions on their Instagram accounts.
Teens today are well-informed about the dangers of the Internet, said 16-year-old Hoang Banghia. “They are already aware enough to know what to do and what not to do online,” he said.
Fellow student Kyidon Nornang, 17, is concerned about the restrictions on content, given that so many young people are turning to social media to stay informed. “Withholding information is never okay … It’s worrying that they think it’s okay to choose what teenagers see.”
Matt Hatfield, executive director of the nonprofit OpenMedia, said he sympathizes with young people frustrated by Instagram’s new measures. While some may be able to manage an account without restrictions, he noted that many others cannot, so efforts to reduce risk are a step in the right direction.
“No set of changes will solve every problem. And some of these problems are more about mitigating risk than preventing risk of harm,” Hatfield acknowledged.
“These are positive changes that ensure that young people are less likely to be approached and manipulated by adults.”
Kari Hollend limits her kids’ social media use, with parental restrictions enabled and phones turned off at certain times. However, the Toronto parent admits “you can only monitor so much” and welcomes more automated safety measures.
“It is very good that there are rules and regulations to protect minors,” she said.
