Instagram to let parents see who their children are messaging

App unveils sweeping safety changes amid concerns over online grooming and sextortion

Instagram will allow parents to see who their children are messaging as part of sweeping safety changes coming to the social media app amid concerns over online grooming and sextortion.
The Meta-owned platform, which is aimed at children aged 13 and over, is to tighten up the privacy settings for millions of teenagers who use Instagram, placing under-18s by default into more restrictive “teen accounts”.
Users under the age of 16 will also require parental permission to disable some of these privacy settings, meaning they have to link their account to that of a responsible adult.
“Teen accounts have built-in protections which limit who can contact them and the content they see, and also provide new ways for teens to explore their interests,” Instagram said in a blog post.
“Teens under 16 will need a parent’s permission to change any of these settings to be less strict.”
The new features will also offer parents the opportunity to see who their child has been messaging in the last seven days under its “parental supervision” tool, although the contents of the communications will remain private.
Under the changes, teenage accounts will be automatically set to private, meaning their posts cannot be viewed by strangers.
They will need an adult with their own Instagram account to change the settings to make it public.
Adults who are linked to a child’s account will also be able to implement a social media curfew on their child’s app, blocking it between the hours of 10pm and 7am.
Starting in 2025, Meta said it would also be enacting stricter age verification checks on millions of children currently on Instagram.
The company is developing new technology to check whether young users are telling the truth about their age. If it finds they are under 18, they will be moved into a teen account.
Meta added that its other apps would also get teen-specific accounts from next year.
The added privacy features come as the UK prepares to enforce the Online Safety Act, which will threaten technology companies with billions of dollars in fines if they fail to properly protect children online.
Social media companies have come under scrutiny amid concerns over online grooming. Research from Ofcom, the UK’s tech regulator, found that three in five children at secondary school had been contacted online in a way that made them feel uncomfortable.
Last year, it cautioned technology companies that “scattergun friend requests are frequently used by adults looking to groom children”.
There have also been warnings over an alarming rise in sextortion gangs targeting children, mainly teenage boys. The trend has been linked to a number of suicides in the UK and the US.
These gangs blackmail young social media users, often engaging in sexually explicit communications before claiming to have hacked their victims account or threatening to release embarrassing pictures.