Instagram has added restrictions for parents of minors using social media, after first introducing them in December of last year and then launching them in the US in March. The collection of settings, known as Parental Supervision, provides restrictions that parents may adjust in order to observe the kinds of online encounters that their children are exposed to. Additionally, the Meta-owned platform has unveiled Family Centre, a “centre of knowledge” that will provide parents access to advice from professionals on how to address problems including exam-related stress and mental health.

How does parental supervision work?

Parental supervision allows parents to set limits on how much time their children may spend each day on Instagram and impose time limits during which they must not use the site (either daily or weekly). Parents could also see who their children were following and following them back. They would also be informed if their children reported an account. Instagram made a change in July of last year that limited the amount of information that marketers may gather and use to provide tailored content to users under the age of 16. Such individuals’ accounts were also automatically changed to private, necessitating them to approve each follower on their social media platforms manually.

Additionally, Instagram had at that time stated that posts posted by users under the age of 16 would not be displayed in the app’s content discovery feed. The action was taken in response to concerns raised by lawmakers throughout the world over the use of social media by minors and the potential exploitation of children’s data for advertising targeting and other related uses. Despite requiring users to be at least 13 years old, the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights, a government agency under the Ministry of Women and Child Development, reported in July 2017 that Facebook and Instagram, two of Meta’s social media platforms, had a sizable number of users who were around 10 years old.

The research urged for action to control access to social media sites for such young users since it revealed that almost one in four 10-year-olds in the nation used the internet and had an Instagram account.