Meta-owned photo and video sharing platform, Instagram is limiting sensitive content for new teen users by default on the platform.
With the latest update, Instagram account holders under the age of 16 will be put into its filtered version of the app, unless they manually change the setting.
Instagram introduced new safety measures and parental features to offer more control over their feeds and profiles last year.
The Sensitive Content Control has only two options for teens and they are “Standard” and “Less.” The new teens on Instagram under 16 years old will be defaulted into the “Less” state. For teens already on Instagram, the company will send a prompt encouraging them to select the “Less” experience.
According to the company, this will make it more difficult for young people to come across potentially sensitive content or accounts in Search, Explore, Hashtag Pages, Reels, Feed Recommendations, and Suggested Accounts.
Users over the age of 18 years will have access to “Standard,” “Less,” and “More” options with the last option allowing them to see more sensitive content or accounts than the default settings.
In addition, Instagram is testing a new way to encourage teens to update their safety and privacy settings.
“We’ll show prompts asking teens to review their settings including controlling who can reshare their content, who can message and contact them, what content they can see and how they can manage their time spent on Instagram,” the company said.
Earlier this year, Instagram launched parental controls that allow parents to track how much time their children are spending on Instagram. With the help of Instagram supervision tools, parents can view what accounts their children follow and can set time limits for how long their kids spend on the app.
