In September 2024, Instagram introduced teen accounts. The thought behind the move was rather altruistic: teens between the ages of 13-16 could enjoy Instagram using built-in protections and limitations that partnered with parents’ safety concerns. Teens could explore their interests and follow their friends; parents could feel a little more at ease knowing the auto-protections kept their kids from spam messages and scam attempts.
The first I heard about this type of account was from a friend whose teen had an account. A bit of autonomy, a feeling of being a bigger kid. What could go wrong, right?
Keep reading to the end to learn what went wrong.
How It Works
Teens under age 16 need their parents’ permission to create an account. Parents should chat with their kids about whether they want an account, how much time to spend on their account each day, what their child can post and how to share what their friends post.
Parents should also discuss the account settings and decide how strict these should be. This gives parents control to keep safety top of mind while teaching their child about internet safety and what constitutes inappropriate experiences and spam.
Teen Instagram accounts are automatically set to private. Teens have to accept new followers. Parents can take comfort knowing people not following their child can’t see what he/she posts, and they won’t get spam messages.
Instagram limits both interactions and sensitive content. Content is age-appropriate; your teen won’t see fighting, posts promoting medical or cosmetic procedures, or adult content. Additionally, Instagram their installed an anti-bully feature called Hidden Words — offensive words/phrases are filtered out.
Lastly, settings such as time notifications (limits the amount of time on the app) and sleep mode (turned on from 10pm – 7am) are turned on to help promote a healthy mindset vs. doom-scrolling.
Parents Access
With the supervision feature, parents can review the topics their teens are looking at and see who has messaged their teen in the last seven (7) days (can’t read those message – sorry, parents). Parents can also set specific time periods for use, including a total daily time limit.
Instagram is well aware teens can lie about their age. As of March 2025, Instagram is working on adding protections to prevent lying, as well as tech that can help Instagram locate teen accounts. They expect testing to start early 2026; I would look to a staggered rollout in 2027.
OK, What Happened?
It’s kind of funny, and at the same time, it’s not. Remember my friend whose teen has an Instagram account? The one thing she didn’t see coming was her son either trying to share content he shouldn’t have, or try to change his account settings without her permission. One of those two actions resulted in his account getting suspended.
Her Meta accounts were also suspended. Why? She’s the parent and she didn’t manager her teen’s account. Worse, she used her accounts for her business; not a good result.
We messaged Instagram at nauseum to help her get her accounts back online. The other part we didn’t see coming was the notification process. Even though she’s his mother, her son was the one who was notified! Adding insult to this mess, when my friend applied for her accounts & her son’s to be reinstated, guess who got that email with the 6-digit security code?
HE DID. The email with the code was sent to the teen’s email, NOT his parent’s!
WHY? He’s the account holder, even though he’s the teen! We both thought she would get that email because she’s the parent. Nope. Oops.
Maybe Instagram should rethink this process.
Have fun with your teen on Instagram! If you have questions, send us an email on our Contact page. We may feature your question as both a blog and a video!
Be strategic. Be visible. Be found.
Ready to start using social media smarter, not harder? Schedule a one-on-one coffee chat over ZOOM to talk about strategically incorporating both social media and inbound strategies into your current marketing plan.
Branded ZOOM backgrounds allow businesses to add another option for secondary marketing and confirms both identity and authority to prospects and customers. Investment starts at $95. Visit our webpage to get started.
#smallbusiness #socialmediatips #digitalmarketing #saturdaysocialmedia #instagramhowto #socialmediamarketing #entrepreneurs #visiblymedia
