Protecting Minors on Social Media

Social media companies are under pressure to shield young people from harmful content. Instagram is overhauling the way it works for teenagers by having more "built-in protections". Their new “teen accounts” have been introduced in the UK, US, Canada and Australia. They automatically turn on privacy settings for all users 13 to 18. One of these settings only allows people who ”follow” the teen user to see their content, and all followers must be approved by the user. For those 13 to 15 this approval will be even stricter, as a parent or guardian must confirm all followers. Meta describes this change as “making it easier for teens to be guided by parents". However, it does not solve one of the primary problems which is that over 35% of children lie about their age to access adult content. Instagram says it uses artificial intelligence to help determine whether users are under 18, or even under the minimum age of 13. But as social media analyst Matt Navarra points out: "As we've seen with teens throughout history, in these sorts of scenarios, they are very good at finding a way around the blockages."