Meta is increasing its safety measures for teenagers on Instagram by blocking livestreaming for under-16s who do not have parental permission, the social media giant announced. The company is also extending its safeguards for under-18s to its Facebook and Messenger platforms.
Under the new rules, users under the age of 16 on Instagram will need parental consent to use the Live feature. They will also require permission from a parent to disable a function that blurs images containing suspected nudity in their direct messages.
These changes coincide with the expansion of Instagram’s teen accounts system to Facebook and Messenger. Introduced last year, Instagram teen accounts automatically place under-18s into settings that allow parents to set daily time limits, block usage at specific times, and view the accounts their child is messaging.
The Facebook and Messenger teen accounts will initially be rolled out in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. Similar to Instagram, under-16 users will need parental permission to alter these settings, while 16 and 17-year-olds who are automatically placed under the new features will be able to change them independently.
Meta reported that 54 million under-18s worldwide use Instagram teen accounts, with over 90% of 13- to 15-year-olds maintaining their default restrictions.
The announcement comes as the UK implements its Online Safety Act. Since March, all sites and apps within the scope of this legislation, encompassing over 100,000 services including Facebook, Google, X, Reddit, and OnlyFans, are legally required to take steps to prevent the appearance of illegal content such as child sexual abuse, fraud, and terrorism material, or to remove it promptly if it appears online.
The Act also includes provisions to protect children from harm, mandating tech platforms to shield under-18s from damaging material like suicide and self-harm-related content. Recent reports suggesting the Act might be weakened as part of a potential UK-US trade deal have been met with strong opposition from child safety groups, who described any compromise as an “appalling sellout” that voters would reject.
When the Instagram restrictions were initially launched, Meta’s then president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, said the aim was to “shift the balance in favour of parents” regarding the use of parental controls. His statement followed remarks indicating that parents often did not utilise existing child safety measures.
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