Instagram will steer teenagers toward private accounts and limit how ads are shown to them

Instagram is a great app for sharing images and videos and following content you enjoy, but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Because people are terrible, it can also be a place predators target women, teens, and more. Now, Instagram is rolling out new protection features that should help teens stay safe.

After being announced earlier this year, these new features should help protect teens from unwanted conversations and followers. For teens making an account for the first time, it will automatically default to a private account. They can switch it after creation, but according to Instagram, many of the teens they surveyed preferred the private account.

With a private account, only people that the user accepts as a follower can see their content. For teen users already on the platform, Instagram will alert them that they can switch to a private account at any time.

In addition, Instagram has developed technology that will automatically block potential predators from seeing or interacting with teen accounts. This is accomplished, in part, by looking at the “potentially suspicious” accounts to see if other teens have blocked or reported them recently.

For accounts that have been marked as suspicious, they will also not be able to see teen users in the Explore tab.

Finally, Instagram announced that it is changing how advertisers can target teens. Previously, they could access information like interests and more, but going forward, they will only be able to target based on age, gender, and location. This will also apply to Facebook.

Overall, these are some good additions from Instagram to help keep its younger users safe, but time will tell if they actually make a difference or if predators find a way around these restrictions.

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• How to block sensitive content on Instagram
• Instagram might soon look like TikTok with full-screen videos and more
• Facebook spent over $20 million protecting Mark Zuckerberg in 2020
• Twitter is now testing out downvotes with some iOS users