Meta launches IG Teen accounts for parents to monitor children under 16

Teenagers are addicted to social media, overly concerned about their appearance, and with the prevalence of cyberbullying, suicides, and shootings on campus, both parties in the United States agree that social media platforms must take responsibility for teenagers and children.

In the House hearing on February 1, TikTok and Instagram were heavily criticized. Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg bowed to parents of victims at the request of lawmakers and promised to allocate more budget to protect children.

On 9/17, Meta announced the launch of IG Teen, allowing parents to monitor the use of Instagram by teenagers under 16 to a limited extent. It is currently only available in some countries and regions, and will be gradually rolled out globally by 2025. According to the official website, IG Teen automatically categorizes teenagers under 16 into the Teen category.

The average legal age of adulthood in the United States is between 18 and 21. Many states have gun sale regulations that allow the purchase of long guns at 18 and handguns from registered dealers at 21. The legal age for purchasing alcohol in the United States is 21. According to the CDC, age restrictions effectively deter teenage accidents and alcohol addiction. Implementing regulations on protecting those under 16 on IG may shield teenagers from the influence of social media before legally purchasing alcohol and firearms.

Key Protection Measures Introduced by IG Teen

IG Teen accounts are automatically integrated with parental protection mechanisms on Meta. The main measures include limiting the time teenagers spend on social media, setting thresholds for adding friends and browsing content, and requiring parental consent for teenagers to remove protection restrictions, among others.

Meta further explains that the new IG Teen accounts are "private accounts," where teenagers can only send and receive messages to and from mutual friends. Parents can supervise the content viewed by teenagers and the messages sent and received. Parents can see the messages sent by teenagers in the past seven days, as well as the time spent on IG and the topics their children are interested in.

How IG Verifies Children's Real Ages

The new mechanism requires teenagers to upload their identification when registering for Instagram and use an AI facial recognition company Yoti. This is how IG believes they can verify a child's age. Nowadays, children are not honest about their age, and Yoti assists in determining the "real age" through AI facial scanning. This may sound a bit strange, and many parents immediately react by saying that if this is implemented, their children will just go use TikTok instead.

IG also offers two other ways for children to verify their age: uploading a self-introduction video or having peers verify their age. However, these methods still reflect an adult's perspective, similar to how adults in the real world prevent children from making bad friends. The extreme approach would be to lock them up and isolate them from the outside world or only expose them to content that parents approve of.

In the United States, known for emphasizing personal freedom, Instagram has suddenly become a strict platform for post-school counseling and education reform for teenagers, tightly controlling content and friendship conditions. Despite this, children will still seek out TikTok, browse Reddit and YouTube, and may even be more curious about content they are not allowed to see. Will IG's "innovations" this year end up as another experiment treating teenagers as guinea pigs? Parents are facing more headaches.