Starting today, Instagram will begin categorizing new and existing users under the age of 18 into “Teen Accounts” — a move that will impact how tens of millions of teens interact with the platform. The new account type automatically applies a series of protections to young users, and only users 16 and older will be able to relax some of those settings.

For starters, all minors’ accounts on Instagram will be private by default (not just teens under 16) and will come with some of Instagram’s existing restrictions for young users, like ones that prevent strangers from direct messaging them. But there are other new features coming, too, including a sleep mode that mutes notifications from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.

“This really standardizes a lot of the work we’ve been doing, simplifies it, and brings it to all teens,” Antigone Davis, Meta’s global head of safety, said in an interview with The Edge“It essentially provides a set of protections that are already in place and that have already been filled.”

Teens can also choose age-appropriate topics they’re more likely to see in Instagram recommendations and on the Explore page, such as “sports,” “animals & pets,” “travel,” and more. Instagram will continue to limit the types of content teens see on Reels or the Explore page. It will also send notifications to remind teens to take breaks from the app.

Along with these changes, Instagram is updating some of its parental controls. Parents who want to supervise their teen on the app will be able to see who their child has messaged in the past seven days (without seeing the content of the messages). They will also be able to see which topics their teen views most often.

Instagram lets teens 16 and older adjust these settings, but younger teens need parental permission to make changes, like making their account public. Parents must then use Instagram’s oversight tools to approve the change.

Instagram’s teen accounts are rolling out gradually to users in the US, UK, Australia and Canada. Teens signing up for new accounts will see the change first, followed by existing users in about a week. Meta plans to bring teen accounts to the European Union later this year and will expand the feature to its other platforms in 2025.

But even with these protections in place for all teens on Instagram, questions remain about how well Meta can enforce them. “We know that some teens will try to lie about their age to get around these protections,” Davis said. “That’s why we’re creating new ways to verify a teen’s age.” Users who try to change their age from under 18 to over 18 already have to take a video selfie, upload their ID, or have other users confirm their age, but Instagram’s new systems go a step further.

The platform can now use AI to scan for signals that could indicate a user is under 18. For example, if a user says they’re 18 when creating an account, but someone in the app says, “Happy 14th birthday,” Instagram can use that to figure out their real age. “One of the challenges with age in general is that it can be really hard to know,” Davis says. “We have to take a layered approach because there’s no foolproof way to do this.”

Since Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked a trove of internal documents detailing the company’s research into teen mental health in 2021, lawmakers have taken a tougher stance on social platforms and their impact on children. Instagram has rolled out a series of child safety features in recent years, launching parental controls in 2022 in response. The platform has even agreed to help researchers study its impact on the mental health of teens and young adults.

All of this has still not reassured lawmakers. Nearly 40 states have backed the Surgeon General’s proposal to require warning labels on social media platforms, while the Senate passed groundbreaking online child safety legislation in July.