Meta to expand Instagram Teen Accounts in India

Reinforcing its commitment to the online safety of young users, Meta on Tuesday announced the expansion of Instagram Teen Accounts to India.

The Teen accounts, to be rolled out in a phased manner in the country, are designed to create a more secure and age-appropriate space for teenagers online.

With built-in protections, Teen Accounts limit unwanted interactions, enhance privacy settings, and provide parents with greater oversight, ensuring a safer social media experience for young users. It also addresses concerns like cyberbullying, exposure to harmful content, and privacy risks.

“At Meta, creating a safer and more responsible digital environment is a top priority. With the expansion of Instagram Teen Accounts to India, we are strengthening protections, enhancing content controls, and empowering parents while ensuring a safer experience for teenagers," Natasha Jog, Director, Public Policy India, Instagram.

A key feature of Teen Accounts is that by default, all accounts are set to private, meaning they must approve new followers. Non-followers cannot view or interact with their content. This applies to all users under 16 (both existing and new) and those under 18 when signing up, said the company.

Teenagers will also have the strictest messaging settings enabled, allowing them to receive messages only from people they follow or are already connected with.

They will also be automatically placed in the most restrictive setting, limiting their exposure to sensitive content, such as depictions of physical fights or promotions of cosmetic procedures, in areas like Explore and Reels.

Further, teenagers can only be tagged or mentioned by people they follow. In addition, the strictest version of the anti-bullying feature, Hidden Words, will be enabled by default to filter out offensive language in comments and DM requests, the company said.

The teenagers will also receive notifications prompting them to exit the app after 60 minutes of daily usage. Sleep mode will be enabled from 10 pm to 7 am, muting notifications and automatically sending replies to DMs overnight.

Notably, Teen Accounts also provides supervision tools for parents, which they can use to monitor and manage their teenager's experience, including approving changes to safety settings and setting daily screen-time limits.

The teenagers under 16 will need parental approval to make any changes to make settings less restrictive. Soon, parents will also have the ability to directly adjust these settings to provide even stronger protections.