Social media has become an integral part of society with access to everything, everywhere at a click of a button. Instagram has announced new limited teen accounts on their app. This will cause any person under the age of 16 to need parental permission to update any privacy and controls.
Dr. Whitney Casares is a pediatrician and mother who has dedicated her life to helping parents understand the proper balance that comes with parenthood. She is also an advocate for helping parents learn about balancing social media.
“Parents of teens are concerned about social media use, they’re concerned about who teens are talking too, they’re concerned about the content they are seeing online, and if their time is being well spent, so I’m always looking for resources to help guide parents,” Dr. Casares said.
Dr. Casares’s concern for helping parents has led her to speak out for the new Instagram teen restrictions.
Now, in order for Instagram to enforce this, they are going to start asking for proof of a user’s identity. That means sending in pictures of ID’s and other government given identification. The company also made a claim to start using artificial intelligence to help decipher teens identities.
The use of A.I will be intriguing to see how reliable it really is. A.I is a fairly new resource and if that technology is misused, it’ll be interesting to see if people get wrongly mistaken for teens.
Instagram also wants to keep the new protocol under wraps, so teens cannot find ways around the system. The secrecy of the update makes for research on how these parental controls will work hard to find. However, they seem hopeful to eliminate any possibility of negative content being seen by minors on social media. This upcoming update is the largest attempt that Instagram has taken for minor safety.
Due to the popularity of social media though, Instagram is a hotspot for teens. Along with apps like Snapchat and TikTok, it is a place of communication, entertainment, and more.
“I would be upset my entertainment is gone, but I understand why stuff needs to be blocked. Some parents don’t restrict their kids’ stuff. I think it will do more good than bad,” Alexis Mulka, 11th grade student, said.
While assumingely most age-appropriate content will not be restricted, there is still the concern of how much Instagram is really going to be blocked. For high schooler’s, majority of them are above 16, but the concern is still there considering the parental controls are only completely eliminated past age 18.
“I’m my grade’s publicist, so I would be concerned about if all my hard work building up our class’s Instagram account was for nothing,” Ashleigh Nordstrom, 10th grade student, said.
Assuming club content is age appropriate, everyone should still be able to see those posts and videos. However, club Instagrams should worry if their account birthday is under 18 as they might end up needing either proof of identity or a parent in charge of them.
“Club’s will not be affected in any major way as long as the content in the posts are age appropriate. Teens have to follow the account before it can interact with it” Dr. Casares said.
This does tie back to the concern of what Instagram is going to consider age appropriate. No one will really no until the app puts these updates into effect early next year. People will have to wait and see how the update effects them personally, but if all is as it says, Instagram should just be monitoring their underage user’s accounts more proactively.
Sources:
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/instagram-meta-teens-private-accounts-increased-restrictions-rcna171294
