Instagram’s new teen accounts are intended to add a layer of safety for users and security for their parents. However, critics worry that the features aren’t sufficient since teens can bypass them as long as their accounts aren’t clocked as belonging to minors.
Some advocate for the site to impose age checks to ensure anyone under 18 is subject to stricter privacy standards. Still, age checks tend to turn some users away, and Meta’s vice president in charge of safety cites privacy protection for rejecting that plan.
Instead, she’d prefer those checks to be much broader and outside the company.
The Smartphone Age Limitation Plan
She suggests that Instagram or other Meta apps should check all users’ ages to impose limits and privacy settings. Requiring 3 billion users to provide identification would go too far.
Instead, Meta vice-president in charge of safety issues Antigone Davis thinks age checks should be built into the smartphone and app stores. According to Barrons:
“They [Android and iOS systems] actually have significant information about the age of users. And if they were to share that broadly across all the apps that teens use, that would provide peace of mind for parents.”
How Might Such A System Work?
Davis didn’t go into too many details about the system she proposed. However, she previously suggested that a user’s age could be entered into the phone or the app stores at startup.
Then, app stores could check the age before allowing downloads. If the age was programmed into the operating system and accessible to the browser, even age-restricted websites, including sites about alcohol and tobacco or selling firearms and accessories, and those for other adult-only content, could limit access based on that information.
Privacy advocates and safety advocates may clash on whether this would be an acceptable system, though, and of course it would require Apple and Google to agree to implement such controls. It also would not prevent kids from accessing Instagram or other sites through a browser on a computer or on an adult’s device, unless Meta and other companies are willing to impose additional blocks to prevent it.
This system would also not prevent side-loading apps and bypassing the app store, which raises a whole different set of safety and privacy concerns.
Davis Has Proposed Other Broader Security Limits
The Meta privacy VP has spoken before about her wish that safety limits for teens were imposed at a higher level, instead of being expected from the app itself.
Last year, she specifically addressed concerns that laws are being imposed at the state level, resulting in a patchwork that can leave parents guessing. This probably also consternates developers who need to comply with various legislation. Instead, she’d like Federal legislation passed to unify the rules across the U.S.
She proposes that Congress pass legislation that would, as she suggests, impose these rules directly on the app stores. She wrote:
“we support federal legislation that requires app stores to get parents’ approval whenever their teens under 16 download apps. With this solution, when a teen wants to download an app, app stores would be required to notify their parents, much like when parents are notified if their teen attempts to make a purchase. Parents can decide if they want to approve the download. They can also verify the age of their teen when setting up their phone, negating the need for everyone to verify their age multiple times across multiple apps.”
Meta Practices What It Preaches In Its Own App Store, To A Degree
Meta’s Quest store is implementing a version of this. Earlier this year, it began requiring users of the Quest 2 and Quest 3 virtual reality systems to re-enter their birthdates in order to limit underaged users’ access to apps that are not intended for them. The Verge reported:
“Teens aged 13 to 17 will have more privacy settings turned on by default and can be monitored through parental supervision tools. Preteens aged 10 to 12 have even more restrictive settings turned on, with only parents or guardians able to change privacy settings.”
Users who entered a different birthdate than they had previously used would be required to verify their age with a credit card or identification. However, there’s no indication that new users’ identification would be checked to verify age.
Instagram’s New Privacy Settings For Teens
In the meantime, to protect users, Instagram has introduced Teen Accounts. Any account belonging to a user whose birthdate identifies them as being under 16 will automatically be transferred to this system.
The features include allowing parents to see who their child is exchanging messages with, and muting messages at night when they would disrupt a child’s sleep. According to CBS, these settings can be changed only with parental permission.
Teen Accounts are also private by default, meaning only those accepting requests can see what teens post. The transition is expected to take about two months to complete.
This all comes after a series of lawsuits against Meta over pre-teen privacy, as well as concerns over social media’s negative effects on teens, including bullying and self-esteem issues.