Instagram is designed to prevent adults from contacting teenagers who don’t follow them as part of new security measures to protect young people. According to new rules, people over the age of 18 cannot send direct messages to Instagram users under that age if this account is not already following them.
The social network also sends security warnings to users under the age of 18 to encourage them to be careful when talking to adults they are already connected with but who may have suspicious behavior.
Suspicious behavior can include sending a large number of friendship or message requests.
In addition, Instagram will make it more difficult for adults to find and follow teens on the platform by restricting the youth accounts shown in the Recommended Users section of the app and by hiding content from young users in Reels and Explore.
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Young users are encouraged to make their accounts private.
Instagram has also recognized that some young people lied about how old they were to set up a page. As part of the new security measures, the platform is developing new artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to determine the real age of younger users.
Instagram currently requires all users to be at least 13 years old to have an account.
Companies continue to be screened by industry experts and activists warning of the dangers online for young people.
The government is expected to enact an Online Safety Act later this year, which aims to introduce stricter rules to protect young people online and harsh penalties for platforms found to fail due to due diligence. Ofcom oversees the regulations
