Age limit introduced for Instagram: Access to content for underage users will be restricted

Instagram has announced that it has introduced new restrictions for underage users. The company, which has been carrying out significant work in recent years to reduce its negative impact on youth and children, stated in its announcement that teen accounts will begin to be used in Turkey, along with other countries, starting in January.

According to the statement on the website of Meta, the owner of Instagram, the new accounts will come into effect in the European Union towards the end of 2024. They went into effect in the United States (USA), Canada, the UK, and Australia as of September 17.

WHAT RESTRICTIONS HAVE BEEN INTRODUCED?

With the new measures, teen account users' accounts will automatically be private. Thus, only followers accepted by the users will be able to see the content they share and interact with them. Similarly, users under 18 will only be able to message people they follow. With this application, Instagram will also filter the content that adolescents may encounter in the Explore and Reels sections. Thus, sensitive content such as violent content or cosmetic product advertisements will appear less frequently to this age group.

It will also provide time warnings to users with teen accounts. In this context, notifications will be sent to users who exceed 60 minutes of daily usage, telling them to exit the application. Accounts under 18 will also enter sleep mode between 10 PM and 7 AM. During this time, incoming notifications will be silenced and messages will be automatically replied to.

PARENTS WILL BE ABLE TO MANAGE ACCOUNT SETTINGS

Parents of underage users will be able to supervise their accounts, manage their children's settings, or allow them to manage them themselves.

They will be able to see which content topics their children have selected. Parents will also be able to see which users their children have messaged in the last week. However, they will not be able to access the content of the messages. Within the scope of Instagram's new rules, parents will be able to set their children's usage time for the application and block them from accessing Instagram during certain time intervals. It was stated that thanks to these technologies, adolescents who register on the platform with an adult date of birth will be detected and their accounts will be converted into restricted accounts.

News Source: 12punto