Instagram is further cracking down on what millions of young people can see on the platform, aligning its “Teen Accounts” safety settings with the guidelines for PG-13 movies.
The Meta-owned platform launched teen accounts last year, its most dramatic effort yet to protect young people following years of criticism from parents and lawmakers over the app’s impact on teens’ mental health and well-being. The settings implemented default privacy protections and content limits for many of Instagram’s teen users, restricting posts related to violence, cosmetic procedures or self-harm.
Tuesday’s update goes a step further. Instagram will not promote and may even hide posts featuring strong language, or those which could encourage “harmful behaviors” such as content featuring risky stunts or marijuana paraphernalia, the company said.
Teens also won’t be able to follow accounts that regularly share age-inappropriate content. If they already follow such accounts, they will no longer be able to see or interact with their content, send or receive direct messages from them or see that account’s comments under other posts. Instagram will block a wider range of search terms for teens, such as “alcohol” and “gore.” And Meta’s AI chatbot “should not give age-inappropriate responses that would feel out of place in a PG-13 movie,” the company said.
“Just like you might see some suggestive content or hear some strong language in a PG-13 movie, teens may occasionally see something like that on Instagram – but we’re going to keep doing all we can to keep those instances as rare as possible,” Meta said in a blog post.
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