Instagram makes major change to tens of millions of accounts with content and messaging restrictions

INSTAGRAM has announced a major shake-up that will restrict a number of top features on teen accounts.

And the social networking giant will also be on the look out for anyone who has lied about their age to avoid the changes.

The Mark Zuckerberg-owned platform will place those under 16-years-old onto new Teen Accounts which require parental permission to make any adjustment to the default settings.

As part of the move, teen users accounts will automatically be switched to private - and tough messaging restrictions will make it impossible to DM anyone they're not already friends with on the app.

In addition, teen account holders will have their interactions limited so that only people they follow can tag or mention them.

They'll even be sent a notification telling them to leave the app after an hour’s use each day.

Sleep mode will also be on by default, which mutes notifications and auto-replies to direct messages between 10pm and 7am each day.

Parents will have the option to see who their teen kids have been messaging in the past seven days as well – though they won't be able to see the contents of the messages.

Former UK deputy prime minister Sir Nick Clegg, who now works as Meta’s president of global affairs, said the aim of the overhaul is to “shift the balance in favour of parents” when it came to using parental controls.

"This (change) really tries to very meaningfully shift the balance in favour of parents by basically putting teens into the strictest default settings over what content they see, who they can be connected with, what time they can spend … and crucially, if you’re under 16, they’ll have to ask mum and dad if they can change those settings," Sir Nick told PA.

"And yes, from our point of view it might mean that some teens may use our apps less, but we feel, given everything we have learned and heard over the last, crucial years – and quite rightly, we’ve been put under an immense amount of scrutiny on these issues – we felt it was time now to shift the playing field in favour of simple, transparent, easy-to-use controls for parents, that’s the motivation behind this."

It comes as online platforms like Instagram have faced accusations of failing to keep younger users away from harmful material on their sites, with many campaigners calling for stronger regulation to force companies to respond.

New teen users who sign-up from today will be put on a teen account.

Existing users will be shifted across starting from next week.

Teens in the UK, US, Canada and Australia should be moved within two months, and those in the EU later this year.

Child safety campaigners cautiously welcomed the step.

Ian Russell, the father of Molly who took her life aged 14 after viewing disturbing content online, said: “Anything that may improve safety online has to be welcomed. In my experience, it’s difficult to get too excited about an announcement, because we’ve had announcements in the past.

"For example, the announcement in early 2019 when Adam Mosseri [head of Instagram] said that Instagram would no longer allow graphic self-harm content.

"And yet Molly Rose Foundation research last November … showed that it was still easy to find, maybe not quite as easy as it was when Molly was looking, but it was still there and algorithmically recommended.

"So there are promising signs, but it’s really hard to know if this is just another bit of corporate spin or if this hopefully is a sign of real change of corporate culture that might lead to a safer platform."