Teen safety

Instagram requires people to be at least 13 to sign up, with a higher minimum in some countries, and identifies teens as people aged 13–177. In June 2022, Mosseri described age-verification options including uploading identification, having other people vouch for someone’s age and providing a video selfie through Yoti8. Mosseri said in April 2025 that overly restrictive protections can encourage teens to give false birthdays or use undisclosed accounts, other devices or the web to work around them9. He described the challenge as finding protections that keep teens safe without driving them to evade the restrictions9.

Instagram’s announcement specifies private defaults for all teens under 16, including existing users, and for everyone under 18 when signing up3. A private account must approve new followers, and people who do not follow it cannot see its content or interact with it3. Teens under 16 need parental permission to make their protective settings less restrictive3. Instagram’s Help Center says that when supervision is active, a parent or guardian must approve less-protective changes unless they have given the teen permission to manage those settings independently1.

Teen Accounts allow incoming messages only from people the teen follows or is already connected with; Mosseri’s earlier January 2024 announcement covered under-16s, and under-18s in certain countries, rather than all under-18s1011. Meta’s Newsroom said in October 2024 that Instagram was making it harder for accounts showing signs of potentially scammy behaviour to request to follow teens, as part of its work against sextortion scams10. Meta’s Newsroom also described preventing suspicious adults from finding teen accounts through lists of likes, followers or followed accounts12. If a suspicious adult follows a teen, Instagram sends the teen a notification prompting them to review and remove that follower12.

Instagram’s Limits tool can restrict comments, direct messages, tags and mentions to Close Friends, which Mosseri described as useful when a teen is being bullied or wants to keep interactions close after changing schools13. Mosseri also said Instagram addresses bullying through removal rules, privacy settings and decisions about which posts and comments appear most prominently, while Meta’s Newsroom described a creator-led Reels campaign offering teens ways to manage social comparison1415. Instagram’s School Partnership Program gives participating US middle and high schools a direct route to report potential teen safety issues, including bullying16. Meta’s Newsroom said verified high-school communities require student verification through UNiDAYS, and participating school administrators and educators can remove Club and Team accounts, Stories and Notes17.

Instagram’s default “13+” setting is a content standard inspired by movie-rating criteria for ages 13 and above, not simply a statement of the minimum signup age45. Meta’s Newsroom says the aim is an Instagram experience closer to watching an age-appropriate movie, while acknowledging that movies and social media differ45. The policies described include hiding or preventing recommendations of sexually suggestive material, graphic or disturbing images, and adult material such as tobacco or alcohol sales45. Limited Content is a stricter setting for parents who want a more restricted Instagram experience for their teen18.

Instagram applies its updated guidelines to suggested posts in Explore, Reels and Feed, as well as followed posts, Stories and comments; teens also cannot open direct-message links to material covered by these restrictions4. Teens cannot follow accounts Instagram finds regularly share age-inappropriate content, or whose names or biographies suggest they are inappropriate for teens5. If a teen already follows such an account, they lose access to its content, cannot message it and cannot see its comments under other people’s posts; Instagram also stops recommending it to teens and makes it harder to find in Search5. These accounts cannot follow teens, send them direct messages or comment on their posts5.

Meta’s Newsroom said in July 2026 that Instagram’s default 13+ setting also applies to Meta AI, which is designed to give age-appropriate responses and decline sensitive prompts, including sexual or romantic conversations and requests for alcoholic-drink recipes18. It also said Limited Content would extend to AI experiences, making Meta AI decline a broader range of prompts when parents choose that setting18. In the Instagram for TV test, Reels generally follow the 13+ content standard for shared viewing, and teen safeguards are intended to limit access to unsuitable content, comments and profiles19. Time spent on Instagram for TV also counts toward a Teen Account’s usage limit19.

Meta’s Newsroom said in May 2026 that Family Center now consolidates supervised accounts across Instagram, Meta Horizon, Facebook and Messenger, with a single invitation available to establish supervision across those apps23. On Instagram, supervising parents can see accounts their teen follows and is followed by, messaging contacts from the past seven days without message contents, and reports the teen chooses to share, including the reported account or post and the type of content2122. The May 2026 updates also give parents insight into the topics shaping their teen’s suggested content23. Mosseri’s October 2025 announcement of visibility into AI conversation topics was forward-looking, as was Meta’s May 2026 promise of future cross-app activity summaries such as combined time spent; these announcements do not confirm that those tools were already available2324.

Instagram’s parental daily time limit prevents a teen from accessing Instagram once the allowance is reached22. Parents can also schedule periods during the day or week when Instagram cannot be used, including nighttime or homework hours212225. Nighttime nudges instead display a full-screen prompt after a teen has spent about ten minutes in areas such as Reels or direct messages late at night20. Mosseri said these nudges encourage rest rather than shutting Instagram down on the teen’s behalf20.

Meta’s Newsroom said Meta commissioned Alice, formerly ActiveFence, to evaluate Teen Account settings and conduct adversarial stress-testing designed to challenge their protections26. Meta’s commissioned assessment compared mature themes, using Meta’s age-appropriate guidelines, across Instagram, a leading competitor and movies rated 13+26. Meta’s commissioned assessment reported 68% less mature content in Instagram’s default 13+ setting than in the competitor’s teen experience, compared with 96% less in Instagram’s Limited Content setting26.

Mosseri reported in April 2025 that 97% of teens kept the protective settings, a figure about retaining defaults rather than a count of harmful encounters28. Meta’s Newsroom’s September 2021 discussion of teen well-being described both positive outcomes from social media and social pressure, including pressure to post things that made teens look good27. Meta said its internal research was intended to identify areas for improvement and inform changes and resources, and that its internal slides highlighted the worst results for that purpose27.