Instagram needs more than new ‘protections’

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/09/2024 (390 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This week, Canadian teens were among the first to encounter Meta’s new “built-in protections” aimed at making Instagram safer for younger users.

Instagram accounts started by users under 18 will now be automatically designated as “Teen Accounts.” Existing accounts will migrate to this setting over the next month. These accounts will be private, with restricted direct messaging so that only people they know can slide into their DMs.

Screen time notifications will also pop up after an hour of use, and sleep mode will be activated from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. and will send auto-replies to messages.

The app will also limit types of “sensitive content” — the examples Meta used in its blog post about the changes were “content that shows people fighting or promotes cosmetic procedures” — young people might encounter on the Explore page or in Reels, and will automatically activate the most restrictive setting of Hidden Words, Instagram’s anti-bullying feature, “so that offensive words and phrases will be filtered out of teens’ comments and DM requests,” Meta’s blog post reads.

Parents will be able to have a lot more control over their teen’s Instagram usage; those under 16 will need to seek parental permission to change any of these settings.

I mean, took you guys long enough. Instagram is a 14-year-old app; that we’re only now seeing these kinds of robust protections for its youngest users is unfortunate. Teenagers are not Instagram’s heaviest user base — that’s 18 to 24 year olds — but you can open an Instagram account as soon as you turn 13.

These changes are reactive, not proactive, and obviously a belated response to the increasing concern about the impact of social media on teens’ mental health.

In 2021, Frances Haugen, a former product manager at Facebook (also owned by Meta) leaked internal documents to the Wall Street Journal revealing that the company knew of the harms it was causing, particularly to teens on Instagram. She then testified in a U.S. Senate hearing, calling for transparency and regulation.

This year, the U.S. surgeon general wrote an op-ed for the New York Times calling for warning labels on social media platforms, a la the ones you see on cigarette packages. The alarm has been sounding for years.

It’s too bad, really, that Meta didn’t have the foresight years ago to just, I don’t know, not allow teens on the app? Instead of having to put in all these new after-the-fact protections and parental controls, why not just raise the age of Instagram to 18? There are many things one cannot do until they are of legal age; why not make “being on Instagram” one of those things?

The problem, of course, is that many teens, and children much younger than 13, are on Instagram all the time — whether they themselves are the ones using it or not. There’s a whole lucrative industry of child influencers who front videos and hawk products on parent-run accounts as a way to jump-start their future dream jobs as influencers and YouTubers.

And young girls, in particular, are being harmed not by their own Instagram usage, but by that of adults.

A truly skin-crawling New York Times investigation from earlier this year revealed how girl influencers whose accounts are run by their parents are heavily targeted by creeps on Instagram.

The Times blocked out the photos and replaced them with text — “this box represents a real photo of a 9-year-old girl in a golden bikini…” — but included the actual comments underneath. One of them is “Mmmmmmmmmm take that bikini off.”

The advent of “Teen Accounts” doesn’t do much to protect those girls, does it?

Even many non-influencer kids have had digital footprints since they were babies; today’s 13-year-olds were born a year after Instagram made its debut. And that’s the scary truth: you can be all over Instagram without ever even signing up for it.

And I wonder, too, about the other, more subtle harms of Instagram (and TikTok, too, because let’s be real, it’s not just Instagram) that spill over into the real world — such as the dawn of Sephora Tween culture.

Labelling cosmetic procedures as “sensitive content” is one thing, but what about Get Ready With Me videos featuring young girls who have elaborate skincare routines featuring expensive products more befitting of 40-year-old women?

More than guardrails and safety protections, I hope a rebellion is coming. I hope kids become disinterested in — and, frankly, disgusted by — these platforms. I hope they assert their right to privacy. And I hope they realize that there’s a whole big world out there if only they just look up.

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com