Instagram presents adolescent accounts with new security features in India

Instagram said on Tuesday that the platform introduces its teenage accounts functionality, which has additional safety measures for safety for users in India, one of its largest markets with more than 350 million users.

The company presented Adolescent accounts last year in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. Meta has migrated the accounts of Instagram users who are under 16 to these new types of accounts with default restrictions. These adolescent accounts are by default private accounts and have messaging restrictions, content controls, interaction limits, time limit reminders and sleep mode.

“At Meta, the creation of a safer and more responsible digital environment is an absolute priority. With the expansion of Instagram adolescent accounts to India, we strengthen the protections, improve content controls and empower parents while ensuring a safer experience for adolescents, “said Natasha Jog, Director of Policy Public India at Instagram, in a blog article.

The configuration of the Teen account means that users under the age of 16 will need the authorization of parents or tutors to modify certain parameters in their accounts. In addition, parents of users over 16 will also have an option to activate Supervision of the adolescent account.

Parents can see who their children interact with, but they cannot see the message. They can also set the daily use limits and block the application for specific hours.

In terms of content, Meta only allows users to obtain messages from people to which they are connected. For the criteria of connected persons, the company considers whether the sender is friends with the receiver on one of the Meta platforms or if they have interacted on DMS before but do not follow you. Adolescents can also be marked only by the people they follow.

Meta also filters the words and offensive sentences of the account of an automatic adolescent. In addition, the company deletes content such as the fight or promotion of cosmetic products from the Explorer and coil page. Teenagers can select subjects such as football, crafts, dance, music and audio, cats, food and drinks and computer science to reintegrate their explorer and show content related to the selected categories .

Meta said he also uses methods such as identification check and video selfies for user age checks, because adolescents often lie on their age on various platforms.

Last month, India published a draft rules related to its data protection law and stressed that companies Impossible to process user data 18 with verifiable parental consent. Platforms may need to have additional protective measures if these rules are finalized.