Instagram are introducing ‘Teen Accounts,’ which put in place new protections for underage users on the app and give parents better control.

For all teens under 18 years old, new restrictions are being phased in to regulate screen time, limit contact with strangers and decrease cyber-bullying. Those aged 16 and 17 will have the ability to opt out of the most restrictive settings while users aged 15 and under will need a parent’s permission to change any settings.

Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, told Good Morning America that parental concern was his main priority.

“They’re an automatic set of protections for teens to proactively address the top concerns that we’ve heard from parents about teens online,” Mosseri said.

“Things like who can contact them, what content they see and how much time they spend on their device … all without requiring any involvement from the parent.”

Parents, on their own accounts, will be able to monitor who their teens are talking to through DMs, without seeing the content of the chat. They will also be able to set limits on screen times and what their teen can have access to on their accounts.

For the app itself, the teen accounts will by default have a new sleep mode set from 10pm to 7am where notifications will be silenced and send auto-replies. The teen accounts will also be automatically put into the strictest settings for sensitive content, meaning even if someone they follow posts sensitive content, they won’t be allowed to see it.

Mosseri also told Good Morning America that they are launching and developing new tools to catch out users who are lying about their age, mentioning teens are the biggest “age-liars”.

“So we are working on all these tools, some of them already exist … we need to improve [them] and figure out how to provide protections for those we think are lying about their age,” he said.

“There’s no perfect solution… It would be amazing if we could catch 70 per cent of teens with 70 per cent accuracy.”

For existing accounts, these changes will take place within the next 60 days in Australia, Canada, the US and the UK, while new accounts will have the restrictions applied from today. In the European Union these changes will take place later in the year.

Photo: Person Holding Phone While Logging-in on Instagram Application by energepic.com is available HERE and is used under a Creative Commons Licence. This image has been cropped for size.