Instagram Teen Accounts

This is a big update that will fundamentally change the Instagram experience for millions of teens, and we need to make sure that everything works correctly. We plan to place teens on Instagram into Teen Accounts within 60 days of starting rollout in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, and teens around the world will start to get Teen Accounts in January.

Teens may lie about their age to circumvent these new protections. That's why we're requiring teens to verify their age in new ways. For example, if they attempt to create a new account with an adult birthday, we will require them to verify their age in order to use the account. We're also building new technology to find teens that have lied about their age to automatically place them in protected settings.

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With Teen Accounts, teens automatically get safety settings that limit contact and inappropriate content, as well as settings to ensure that their time on Instagram is well spent. These built-in default settings include private accounts, restrictions on messaging, restrictions on who can tag and mention them, reminders to leave the app after 60 minutes each day, notifications muted overnight and more.

Teens aged 13-15 cannot change these settings to be less strict without a parent's permission. In addition, for any teens who are enrolled in parental supervision (irrespective of their age), they'll need a parent's approval to change these settings to a less strict state.

No. Parents do not have to approve their teen's usage of Instagram. Teen Accounts are designed to provide parents with peace of mind that their teens are automatically placed into safe, built-in protections. If teens aged 13-15 want to change an automatic setting to be less strict, they'll need a parent's permission to do so.

With parental supervision enabled, parents can approve or deny their teen's requests to change settings.

Both the teen and their parent or guardian must have or create an Instagram account to use supervision.

We'll start to bring Teen Accounts to teens around the world by early next year. This is a big update that will fundamentally change the Instagram experience of millions of teens, and we want to take the time to get it right. So, we're starting with the US, UK, Canada and Australia now, and will begin moving teens in the European Union into Teen Accounts later this year.

To learn more about Teen Accounts, please visit the Help Centre.

We're starting with Instagram and will bring Teen Accounts to additional apps in the coming months.

No – parents still won't be able to read their teen's messages. This new feature means that they can see who their teen has been chatting with in the last 7 days, but not the content of those messages. As with all our parental supervision features, this is designed to strike the balance between helping parents be more involved in their teen's online experiences, while still protecting teens' privacy and autonomy.