After years of scrutiny over its handling of teen safety on its platform, Meta is introducing a new type of account that will soon be required for all teens under 16 on Instagram. The new “teen accounts” add more parental supervision tools and automatically opt teens into stricter privacy settings that can only be adjusted with parental approval.
The changes are unlikely to satisfy Meta’s toughest critics, who have argued that the company puts its own profits ahead of teens’ safety and wellbeing. But the changes will be significant for the app’s legions of younger users who will face new restrictions on how they use the app.
With teen accounts, kids younger than 16 will be automatically opted into Instagram’s strictest privacy settings. Many of these settings, like automatically private accounts, the inability to message strangers and the limiting of “sensitive content” have already been in place for teenagers on Instagram. But younger teens will now be unable
