CNN Newsource
By Clare Duffy, CNN
New York (CNN) — 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.
The update follows a series of reports calling into question the effectiveness of the “teen accounts” protections. One study published earlier this month by a group of online safety and child advocacy organizations, for example, found that nearly 60% of 13- to 15-year-olds using Instagram’s teen accounts settings reported seeing “unsafe content and unwanted messages” within the last six months. Meta disputed the report, calling it biased and telling Time magazine that it ignored teens who have positive experiences on the platform.
Reuters and the Wall Street Journal also reported earlier this year that Meta’s AI chatbot would flirt and engage in romantic or sexual roleplay with young people. In response, the company said it was updating how its chatbot can interact with teens and limiting the AI characters young users can interact with on its platforms.
It also comes as a growing number of states and countries move to restrict or outright ban access to social media for some teens. Denmark’s prime minister announced last week that the country will ban social media for children under 15, although parents would have the option to approve its use for teens 13 and up.
Meta said the changes are a response to parents who have asked for clearer guidelines and more control over their children’s experiences on Instagram.
“We decided to more closely align our policies with an independent standard that parents are familiar with,” the company said.
The Motion Picture Association, which distributes film ratings, distanced itself from Meta’s announcement in a statement on Tuesday.
“The Motion Picture Association was not contacted by Meta prior to the announcement of its new content moderation tool for Instagram Teen Accounts,” Motion Picture Association Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin said. “We welcome efforts to protect kids from content that may not be appropriate for them, but assertions that Instagram’s new tool will be ‘guided by PG-13 movie ratings’ or have any connection to the film industry’s rating system are inaccurate.”
Meta’s new content restrictions will be automatically applied to all users under 18, although teens can return to the previous settings with their parent’s permission if they have their accounts linked. (Previously, 16- and 17-year-olds could opt-out of all teen accounts’ protections without permission; they’ll still be able to do so for the default privacy settings.)
Meta says it uses artificial intelligence to estimate the ages of users, regardless of the birthdate they sign up with, in an effort to identify teens who might be intentionally skirting the protections.
Tuesday’s update will also allow parents whose accounts are linked to their teen’s to turn on a more restrictive setting called “Limited Content,” which will filter more types of posts and remove the child’s ability to see, leave or receive comments under posts. The setting will also restrict the types of conversations teens can have with AI, starting next year.
The restrictions will roll out gradually to teens in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada starting on Tuesday, and to the rest of the world in the coming months.
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