Instagram rolls out new ‘Teen Accounts’ with parental supervision tools

JACKSON, Tenn. — Social media has benefits for teens such as helping them learn a new skill or creating new friendships — but it can also be challenging to navigate as a family.

Instagram recently announced that they are changing how teens use the app with new Teen Accounts.

Teen accounts have built-in protections that limit who can contact teens and the content they see.

Teens under 16 will need a parent’s permission to change any of these protections.

“Instagram, teen accounts and the parental supervision tools actually makes this easier by making it, for example, that parents can’t read those individual messages and so that they can see the topics that are age appropriate that their teens are looking at within teen accounts and get more insight if they’d like to,” said Dr. Whitney Casares. “This makes it so that teens do not have to have that invasion of privacy, but parents can still have some level of supervision and control.”

According to Dr. Casares, Instagram has already placed millions of teens into teen accounts automatically.

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