Meta’s more restrictive Instagram accounts for teens are a good start in building a safer experience for young users, but experts say the suite of new rules also raise further questions about what more social media companies will do to protect youth.
With Tuesday’s announcement, Meta is following through with demands many parents have made for more than a decade, according to Philip Mai, a senior researcher and co-director of the Social Media Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University.
The teen account features — including accounts set to private by default, limits to “sensitive content” on their feeds and notifications turned off overnight — appear to answer long-running parental concerns like who can communicate with their kids, what topics teens get exposed to and overuse of the app.
“This is a long time coming and I’m glad they’re rolling out something like this. But as always, with a new feature like this, the …