Like the cigarette companies they increasingly resemble, social media platforms are hoping a few gestures towards safety will undercut a tidal wave of evidence that kids who use their products are more anxious and less healthy. Now, as the New York Times reports, Instagram has introduced teen protections, modeled after the MPAA’s PG-13 film ratings, which are meant to address concerns about the content kids are consuming — but not the addictiveness of the experience, or the tendency among today’s teens to swap IRL socializing for solitary scrolling.
The new protections were announced by Max Eulenstein, Instagram’s head of product management, and will apply to accounts marked as under-18. Images that show up in feeds and topics broached by chatbots will be restricted to the kinds of things you might find in a PG-13 movie — including the occasional swear word and “mild” nudity. If they choose, parents can also opt for the even more-restrictive “Limited Content” setting.
“Our North Star in the teen experience is parents and what they’re telling us they want for their teens, and that’s what led to this development and why we focused on the PG-13 standard,” Eulenstein said.
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Last year Instagram, its parent company Meta, and CEO Mark Zuckerburg came under fire after an error in Instagram’s code accidentally pushed graphic sexual content and violence to pretty much everyone’s feeds, including minors. Afterwards, the company made a first round of changes, setting every teen’s account to “private” by default and filtering some content from their feeds.
But experts had been complaining that the protections didn’t do much, and many states have been mulling laws that would restrict the ability for social media companies to enter into user agreements with minors. Some, like a Florida law banning social media use for children, have been blocked by courts.
Meta is hoping that the new changes will disarm parental anger and lawmaker concerns. To extend the cigarette analogy, we’re right around 1964, when tobacco companies announced that they would voluntarily stop most advertising to children, but before lawmakers passed bills that would lead to strict enforcement.