Instagram is rolling out a major change for teens, as the platform introduces automatic “teen accounts” for underage users in Australia, the US, the UK and Canada.

Teen accounts will get content restrictions, new rules about who can contact those users, and features to limit screen time.

Instagram’s parent company Meta said the changes would apply immediately to new accounts, while the company aims to transition existing teen users to the stricter rules within 60 days.

Meta’s announcement comes just over a week after the federal government announced it plans to introduce a minimum age for social media by the end of the year. However, the company says there is no exact timing yet.

“It’s releasing now because it’s ready, but it’s been over a year since we started working on it,” said Instagram’s head of product Adam Mosseri.

“I can’t spend a lot of time designing a product with my team that satisfies the entire group.”

What will change for Australian teenagers and their families?

According to Mr Mosseri, parents, not the government, are their “north star” in developing teen accounts.

“One of the things we heard clearly from parents during the research was that they didn’t want to figure it out for themselves. They wanted it to work without them being involved,” he said.

For that reason, he said, teen accounts would be created automatically, rather than requiring you to sign up for them.

Sixteen and seventeen year olds have the option to opt out of the most restrictive settings, but anyone fifteen or younger will need permission from a parent or guardian to do so.

Meta said the same rules will be implemented on its other platforms next year.

Meta’s plan to prevent teens from avoiding the changes

Meta expected that many teenagers would try to circumvent the new measures.

“The more restrictive the experience, the greater the theoretical incentive for a teen to try to work around the restriction,” Mr. Mosseri said.

In response, the company is launching and developing new tools to unmask these types.

Instagram already asks teenage users for proof of age if they want to change their birth date to that of an adult, and has been doing so since 2022.

Now, if an underage user tries to create a new Instagram account on the same device with an adult birthdate, the platform will notice and force the user to verify their age.

In a statement, the company said it won’t share all the tools it uses, “because we don’t want to give teens an instruction manual.”

“So we’re working on all of these tools, some of them already exist… we need to improve them and figure out how to protect those who we think are lying about their age,” Mosseri said.

The most persistent category of “age liars” are underage users who have lied about their age from the start.

Meta said it is developing AI tools to proactively detect these people by analyzing user behavior, networks and the way they interact with content.

Australians won’t see this technology for a while, though. It’s expected to be tested with users in the US in 2025.

“There is no perfect solution,” he said.

“It would be great if we could catch 70 percent of teenagers with 70 percent accuracy,” he said.

He said that while it is possible to verify age across the board, “we’re talking about collecting biometric facial data or government IDs from people… these are very sensitive pieces of information that I’d rather not collect.”

Will it hurt Instagram’s profitability?

Meta described the measures as the strongest in the sector to date, and was aware they may come with a price tag.

Mr Mosseri said he hoped his competitors would follow suit, but he believed some companies “won’t make the changes unless they are forced to”.

He expected the changes would drive some teens away and move to other platforms in the meantime.

“We are definitely going to see a loss of engagement and growth from teens… the question is how much, not if.

“I have to assume that in the long run it will be good for our business… but it will be difficult and in the short term it will hurt.”

Loading…Loading…