Creating safe, age-appropriate experiences on Instagram
Our tools and resources are here to help parents and teens feel safe and informed. Explore our guides, tips and insights to experience Instagram with confidence and peace of mind.
What's new on Instagram
Instagram is always evolving to give parents and teens better tools and experiences.
Age-appropriate content filters
Instagram's Teen Accounts enable content settings inspired by 13+ content ratings.
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Manage everything in one place
Send one invitation to supervise all of your teens' Meta accounts in one place.
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AI protections on Instagram
Parents supervising Teen Accounts can now see the topics that their teen has asked Meta AI about in the last seven days.
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Age-appropriate content filters
Instagram's Teen Accounts enable content settings inspired by 13+ content ratings.
Learn more
FEATURES AND TOOLS
Get in the know about Instagram features
Learn more about features and tools dedicated to helping teens create,
explore and connect on Instagram in safe, age-appropriate ways.
Appropriate content
Appropriate content
We take proactive measures to enhance everyone's safety. Our team works to review and remove content that violates our Community Guidelines. We've also created tools such as:
- Content filtering for Teen Accounts is automaticallly inspired by 13+ content ratings.
- The ability to set hidden words , which flags comments and message requests that are considered inappropriate or offensive.
With supervision enabled, parents and guardians can:
- Be notified if their teen reports specific content and chooses to share that information with you
- Be notified if their teen repeatedly tries to search for terms related to suicide or self-harm within a short period of time.
Contact and interactions
Contact and interactions
We take bullying and harassment seriously. Comment warnings are displayed to remind people of our Community Guidelines when there's an attempt to post potentially negative or offensive comments, informing them that their comment may be removed or hidden if they proceed.
- Our restrict tool prevents comments from being visible by anyone other than the restricted person
- With blocking, teens can block an account and any future accounts that the blocked person may create
- Limits allow your teen to automatically hide comments and message requests from new followers or people who don't follow them
- Controls allow them to restrict tags or mentions to only people that they follow or no one at all in a comment, caption or story
- Teens under 16 are prohibited from going live unless their parents give them permission to do so
With supervision enabled, parents and guardians can:
- Receive notifications on who your teen is following and who's following them
- See who their teen has blocked
- Be notified if your teen reports something and chooses to share that report with you
- See topics that your teen has asked Meta AI about in the past 7 days
Time management
Time management
Teens are encouraged to create boundaries around how much time they spend on Instagram. You and your teen have access to features, such as:
- Sleep mode to silence all notifications at night and change their activity status
- Daily limits and reminders, where teens are notified to leave the app after 60 minutes each day, and teens under 16 will need their parent's permission to change this notification
With supervision enabled, parents and guardians can:
- See insights around their teen's use
- Set limits on daily use
- Give them agency to make extension requests to spend more time on Instagram
Online safety and privacy
Online safety and privacy
The safety and privacy of the people who use Instagram is a top priority for us. When teens join Instagram, their account will be set to protected and age-appropriate settings. Our automatic defaults for teens include:
- Private accounts for teens under 18. Teens under 16 will need their parent's permission to change this setting
- Message controls that allow teens to limit who can send them DMs and add them to group chats, giving them the choice to only receive messages from people who follow them
- DM restrictions mean that only people they follow or people they're already connected to can message them or add them to group chats
With supervision enabled, parents and guardians can:
- See account privacy settings, such as their account privacy, who your teen is able to message with and who can add them to group chats
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Well-being
Well-being
It is important that we help teens feel positive about the time that they spend on Instagram. We support them with tools, such as:
- Alternative topic nudges, where we send notifications, prompting them to shift their focus to other topics to encourage awareness
- Mute to allow them to silence accounts that they don't wish to receive posts and stories from
- Hide like counts on their posts and the posts that they see while scrolling
- If someone is searching for content that may be related to eating disorders or self-injury, we'll share helpful expert-backed resources.
FEATURED NEWS AND RESOURCES
RESOURCES
How using tools such as supervision can make parenting in the digital age easier
Vicki Shotbolt, Founder and CEO of Parent Zone, shares how parents can use supervision tools and meaningful conversation to help teens navigate the digital world.
Read more
There are lots of differences between social media and films. We didn't work with the MPA when updating our content settings, and they're not rating any content on Instagram, and they're not endorsing or approving our content settings in any way. Rather, we drew inspiration from the MPA's public guidelines, which are already familiar to parents, as well as feedback from parents. Our content moderation systems are not the same as a film ratings board, so the experience may not be exactly the same.