Instagram Has Created New “Teen Accounts” To Protect Teenagers

Instagram has announced that specialised accounts made for teenagers will be rolled out in January 2025.

These new accounts are designed to try and protect teenagers, while still giving them access to Instagram.

Here is a list of features that the new teen Instagram accounts will have:

• Teen Accounts automatically have sleep mode turned on from 10PM to 7AM every day. During sleep mode, Instagram notifications are muted, auto-replies to messages are turned on, and the teen will see a reminder to close Instagram.

• A reminder will be given to close Instagram after a total of 60 minutes is spent on the app each day.

• Parents will know who their son/daughter has been speaking to for the last 7 days but will not be able to view the content of the messages.

• Teen Accounts are automatically set to see less sensitive content from accounts they don’t follow.

• The accounts will automatically be set to private by default. Teens under 16 can only change this default setting with help from a parent or guardian.

• Teens will not be able to be messaged by anyone they’re not already connected to.

• Tags, mentions and content remixing will only be permitted by accounts they follow.

• Teen Accounts are automatically set to hide potentially offensive comments and message requests with the strictest Hidden Words setting.

• ID and a selfie will be required to verify the user’s real age.

You might be reading this and thinking “Wow, well done Instagram! This sounds great!”

But let’s think about this. Why is Instagram creating these teen accounts? Is Instagram implementing these teen accounts because they care deeply about the well-being of teenagers around the world? Are they doing it because they’re an ethical

Of course not. Don’t be naive, dear reader.

The reason these teen accounts have emerged is because public opinion has turned drastically against social media. With the increase in teen suicides, particularly of teenage girls as well as an increase in eating disorders, public opinion has shifted to the point where Instagram is forced to act.

Instagram desperately wants to keep its teen userbase because it’s worth billions of dollars. With teen accounts, they can keep the money coming in from their teen users, while making it look like they’re taking action to protect teenagers.

While it’s a step in the right direction, Instagram will remain a toxic environment for teenagers as it always has been.

The algorithms will still be addictive. Teenagers will still spend hours scrolling from one attention-grabbing piece of content to the next.

Photo-retouching apps will still be used to make everybody on Instagram more attractive than reality. And teenage girls will continue to compare themselves to digitally enhanced images of beauty and feel ugly in comparison.

Teens will continue to spend their years of puberty in a strange, unnatural digital competition with their friends to take the prettiest selfies and have the most likes and followers.

Even if social media companies had the absolute best intentions (which they don’t, at all), social media would still be a toxic environment for teenagers because it’s not a natural way for teenagers to interact.

Teens aren’t supposed to spend their early years lying in bed alone sending text-based messages and GIFs to their friends. They’re not supposed to be trying to find their first girlfriend/boyfriend by sending DMs to someone’s Instagram Inbox. They’re not supposed to have their embarrassing teenage moments recorded and shared to everyone they know. They’re not supposed to be evaluating their own self-esteem based on how big the numbers on their Instagram profile are.

It’s just wrong. It’s all just so wrong.

In a sane world, all social media of any form for under-18’s would be completely banned.

Proposal: Social Media Should Be Banned For All Under-18’s

Yes, you heard me.

In a sane world, nobody under the age of 18 would be able use any major social media program in the first place.

And it should have been banned a long time ago.

But the idea of banning social media for everyone under the age of 18 is still outside the Overton window.

Personally, I’ve been suggesting a ban of social media for under-18s since around 2018. Over the years, whenever I’ve brought this up, it’s been dismissed. “It’s impossible”. “We can’t just ban everything”. “They will find a way to access it anyway”.

We ban cigarettes. We ban alcohol. We ban gambling. We ban driving (depending on the country). We ban all of these things for under-18’s for good reason.

And yet most people still can’t fathom the idea of doing the same thing with social media.

Ideas outside the Overton window are always seen as radical and ridiculous until the culture shifts and then suddenly ideas that would have been laughed at 5 years previously are now discussed with seriousness.

This is exactly what will happen with the idea of banning social media for under-18s. A “crazy” idea today. In 10 years, it will be seen as common sense.

In 50 years, people will look back in disbelief.

You mean they just let teenagers use social media with no restrictions whatsoever?

You mean they just allowed giant social media corporations to target 13 year olds with highly sophisticated, highly addictive, AI powered algorithms to capture their attention for as long as possible?

You mean that all of the adults at the time just saw this as completely normal and didn’t even try to stop it?

That’s that they’ll say about 2024.

Instagram have made teen accounts to “try and protect teenagers”. I’m afraid it’s too little too late.

The damage has already been done. It’s been going on for years. And the true extent of the psychological damage to teens cannot possibly be measured or quantified.

And even with restrictions, there is no world in which social media will ever be net-positive for teenagers around the world. It can’t be. Because teenagers (and all of humanity) are not evolved to communicate through a digital screen.

Communicating through a digital screen will always have strange psychological effects for all of us because digital screens are an evolutionary mismatch for our brains.

Even if those who create those digital screens had the best of intentions (and they don’t), it will simply never work.

Thanks Instagram. But no thanks.

This was my very first email newsletter. I hope you learned something. Or at least mildly enjoyed it.

Until next time.