Instagram's new policies stop adults DMing teens who don't follow them

[midian182]

What just happened? Instagram is introducing new policies to protect the platform's young users. The social media app has now banned adults from sending direct messages to teenagers that do not follow them. Additionally, teens will see prompts warning them to be cautious when they are in conversations with adults who have been "exhibiting potentially suspicious behavior."

Much like owner Facebook, the minimum age requirement for Instagram account holders is 13. To protect teens from unwanted contact from someone much older, any adult that tries to DM a person under 18 who isn't a follower will receive a notification informing them the action isn't possible.

Even if a teen does follow an adult, they will see notices in conversations warning them if the older person has been exhibiting suspicious behavior, such as sending a large number of message requests to people under 18.

Instagram is also making it more difficult for adults to find and follow teens, including restricting them from seeing teen accounts in 'Suggested Users', preventing them from discovering teen content in Reels or Explore, and automatically hiding their comments on public posts by teens.

"These updates are a part of our ongoing efforts to protect young people — and our specialist teams continue to invest in new interventions that further limit inappropriate interactions between adults and teens," writes Instagram.

New teenage users will also be encouraged to make their profile private when signing up to Instagram. If they do create a public account, Instagram will send notifications later, "highlighting the benefits of a private account and reminding them to check their settings." Rival TikTok said in January that all under-17s' accounts would be made private by default.

The big problem faced by Instagram is that not all users are honest about their ages when creating accounts. To address this problem, the company is developing new "artificial intelligence and machine learning technology" to try and detect someone's age when they sign-up, though it didn't go into detail about how this will work.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/88943-instagram-new-policies-stops-adults-dming-teens-who.html

 

[QuantumPhysics]

I have a better idea:

How about anyone under 18 isn't allowed on Twitter - or Facebook, without a Parent - an Adult who's 18 - who completes an age verification check giving them permission?

 

[Chemicalfaerie]

I have a better idea:

How about anyone under 18 isn't allowed on Twitter - or Facebook, without a Parent - an Adult who's 18 - who completes an age verification check giving them permission?

That is certainly an idea. I wouldn't call it a better idea though. More like victim-blaming. Kids can't be involved in social media because adults can't stop being creeps?

 

[QuantumPhysics]

That is certainly an idea. I wouldn't call it a better idea though. More like victim-blaming. Kids can't be involved in social media because adults can't stop being creeps?

I don't consider calling out bad-parenting and children (minors) who should not be on social media to be a bad thing.

Yes I victim blame.

Yes I finger point.

I do it proudly.

 

[BSim500]

I have a better idea: How about anyone under 18 isn't allowed on Twitter - or Facebook, without a Parent - an Adult who's 18 - who completes an age verification check giving them permission?

I have an ever better one. Prevent anyone under the age of 180 from opening a social media account.

 

[Ravey]

That is certainly an idea. I wouldn't call it a better idea though. More like victim-blaming. Kids can't be involved in social media because adults can't stop being creeps?

Plus a lot of Parents/Adults will just complete the age veryfication for their kids without a second thought.

 

[McMurdeR]

That is certainly an idea. I wouldn't call it a better idea though. More like victim-blaming. Kids can't be involved in social media because adults can't stop being creeps?

Not necessarily. Teenagers are not allowed to drink alcohol because society deems they don't have enough maturity to handle it yet. We could use the same arguement here.

 

[VEGGIM]

Not necessarily. Teenagers are not allowed to drink alcohol because society deems they don't have enough maturity to handle it yet. We could use the same arguement here.

That is something someone from the UK was trying to do and everyone even adults were against it. By forcing you to have id's or parental id's for social media.

 

[bham5000]

And what happens when the "suspicious behavior" flag has random glitches and the whole family of the adult victim of that thinks they are a pedo for the rest of their lives.

Worse yet people start maintaining public lists of people who got that flag and some of them are false positives.

Thankfully my only usage if it is to like cute raccoon vids I receive from my gf but I think some people are gonna get screwed.