https://about.fb.com/news/2025/02/introducing-teen-accounts-in-india-on-instagram/

Why Teen Safety on Instagram Matters

With more teens spending time online, concerns about cyberbullying, privacy risks, and harmful content have grown. Instagram’s Teen Accounts address these concerns by automatically applying the highest safety settings for users under 16. These settings create a secure and age-appropriate environment, helping teens navigate social media safely.

Natasha Jog, Director, Public Policy India, Instagram, says: “At Meta, safety is a top priority. With Teen Accounts, we are strengthening protections, improving content controls, and giving parents more oversight to ensure a safer experience for teens.”

Key Features of Instagram Teen Accounts

1. Private Accounts by Default
   • Teen accounts are automatically set to private mode, meaning only approved followers can see their content. This applies to all users under 16 and new users under 18.
2. Messaging Restrictions
   • Teens can receive messages only from people they follow, reducing unwanted interactions.
3. Sensitive Content Control
   • Teens will have limited exposure to harmful content, including violence, self-harm discussions, and cosmetic procedure promotions.
4. Tagging & Mention Limits
   • Teens can only be tagged or mentioned by people they follow.
5. Time Limit Reminders
   • After 60 minutes of usage, teens will get reminders to take a break.
6. Sleep Mode (10 PM – 7 AM)
   • Notifications will be muted overnight, reducing screen time.

Parental Supervision Tools

Parents now have more control over their teen’s Instagram activity. For users under 16, any attempt to make safety settings less restrictive will require parental approval.

New parental controls include:

• Monitoring Messages: Parents can see who their teen has messaged in the last 7 days (without reading the content).
• Daily Screen Time Limits: Parents can set time restrictions, after which Instagram will be blocked.
• Blocking Instagram at Specific Hours: Parents can disable access during school hours or bedtime.

Mansi Zaveri, Founder & CEO of Kidsstoppress.com, supports this move: “Teen safety online is crucial. Instagram’s new Teen Accounts feature strengthens privacy settings, limits unwanted interactions, and helps parents monitor social media use.”

Stronger Age Verification for Extra Safety

To prevent young users from lying about their age, Instagram is strengthening age verification measures. If someone tries to create an account with an adult birthdate, extra verification steps will be required.

Additionally, content protections will ensure that teens only see age-appropriate material, with sensitive content controls set to the strictest level by default. Even if a friend shares restricted content, Instagram will automatically hide it.

The introduction of Teen Accounts is a significant step toward creating a safer digital space for young users in India. With improved privacy controls, content filters, and parental supervision, Instagram aims to balance teen autonomy with online safety.

Uma Subramanian, Co-Founder & Director, RATI Foundation, states: “These updates add an extra layer of security and help make social media safer for teens. Effective implementation will ensure meaningful improvements in online safety.”

With Teen Accounts, Instagram is making social media a safer, healthier, and more responsible space for young users in India.

Instagram has stated that it is extending the 15-second time restriction for Instagram stories to 60 seconds in a recent TechCrunch story. A user’s video used to be divided into smaller portions if it was longer than 15 seconds in the past. This made adding videos to Instagram Stories, as well as tagging and mentioning other users, more difficult.

According to earlier reports, Instagram began testing the new version with a select number of users near the end of the previous year.

Also, Instagram launched its Family Center and parental control capabilities in India earlier this month. Back in March, Meta had made announcements about the Family Center tool and the parental control capabilities. Parents and guardians can receive materials and methods for monitoring from top specialists at the Family Center. These tools will enable them to set time limits and monitor how much time their children are spending on Instagram. A part of Meta’s efforts to safeguard kids who actively use its social media apps is the addition of new parental controls.

Instagram users can now bulk delete or archive all of their content, including posts, Stories, IGTV, and Reels, as well as any interactions, such as comments, likes, and story sticker reactions. In the Your Activity area, users will be able to filter their content and interactions by date, as well as search for prior comments, likes, and story replies from the specified date range.

Users may also access recently archived or deleted content, examine search history, view the links you’ve visited, as well as the amount of time you’ve spent on the platform, and download their data with the current deployment. These updates eliminate the trouble of having to manually go through each and every post in order to take action.

To access “Your activity” go to your Profile and tap the menu in the upper right corner, next tap “Your activity”.

Instagram introduced the Take a Break update earlier this month. The tool allows users to set reminders to take a break from scrolling after a particular amount of time has passed, and it is available to all users on the service as an option. Take a Break will be added to Instagram’s existing Daily Limit function, which allows users to set a time limit for themselves.

According to Instagram, “Image previews will now appear in your Tweet when sharing Instagram posts from public accounts to Twitter. This highlights your content and shows people what they’ll see when they click your link. Our goal is to create a better experience for people who want to see a preview of Instagram content while scrolling on Twitter.”

Instragram update: How Instagram Previews on Twitter Work

To see a preview of an Instagram post on Twitter, the Instagram account needs to be public. While writing a Tweet, include a link to a public Instagram post, the image preview will be shown as a Twitter Card with a thumbnail in the Tweet. When choosing to share to Twitter from Instagram, the caption from the post will appear in addition to the image preview.

Clicking the link of the preview on Twitter will bring you directly to the post on Instagram. All types of Feed posts, like Photos, Videos, Carousels and Reels, will preview when shared on Twitter. Stories won’t show up as previews on Twitter for now.

More Ways to Discover Your Instagram Content

In addition to sharing previews on Twitter, users can also embed their Instagram profiles on a website. Users can share previews of profiles and up to six of their most recent images to encourage people to view more. This will be first available in the United States, and then afterwards to other countries.

How to embed Instagram profile on the web:

To embed an Instagram profile on the web:

• Go to the profile you want to share.
• If it’s your profile, click the gear icon. If it’s another profile, click the •••.
• Click “embed,” then “copy embed code.”
• Copy and paste the code into your website to display a profile preview.

According to a recent update, Instagram is making modifications to the photo and video sharing service that would alter how users share external content on the app. The Facebook-owned firm has started sending messages to users about forthcoming changes to the app’s “swipe up” link, which allows users to add links to content posted elsewhere.

Instagram recently began showing a brief popup message to select customers, stating that swipe-up links will be removed starting August 30. Instead, users will be able to link to external information and websites using link stickers that can be tapped by users. The ability to reply to a story with a link, as opposed to the swipe-up link, which has the gesture in place of the reply button, is one of the main advantages of Instagram link stickers.

Swipe-up links are presently only available to Instagram users that are verified or have more than 10,000 followers. According to the article, once the platform phased out swipe-up links later this month, only those accounts that could generate them will be allowed to share Instagram link stickers.

After you finished recording your video, press the captions sticker, and the speech in the video will be auto-translated. Instagram allows you to choose from a variety of fonts and change the color of your captions.  It’s likely that the transcript will not be accurate, so there’s also the opportunity to edit words in captions.

This function is expected to gain popularity, and it is also beneficial to people who have hearing impairments.

The redesigning of the Reels tab on the home screen is given by focusing on young people and creators because they’re trendsetters. Launched only a few months back, Reels has become the first choice of content creators to engage with the world. Also, the world has seen an incredible amount of shopping move online, Shop tab is given on the home screen. Now it is easy for shoppers to find personalized recommendations, shoppable videos, new product collections, editors’ picks curated by the @shop channel, and more.

Instagram mentioned in a blog, we don’t take these changes lightly – we haven’t updated Instagram’s home screen in a big way for quite a while. But how people create and enjoy culture has changed, and the biggest risk to Instagram is not that we change too fast, but that we don’t change and become irrelevant. We’re excited about the new design and believe it gives the app a much-needed refresh while staying true to our core value of simplicity. We’ll continue listening to your feedback so we can keep improving Instagram for you.

Instagram has released this information on its official Twitter handle and it clearly states that the company is testing direct messaging for the web, after which you can read and reply to the message anywhere. Along with the tweet, the company has also shared its desktop image. Explain that the direct messaging feature is available for mobile users first and now web users can also take advantage of it.

This new filter option of Instagram is present in Boomerang Composer’s Instagram Stories camera. With the help of SloMo feature, Boomerang will be able to convert videos from their original speed to half speed. With the help of the Echo feature, you will get a double vision effect which can be used in both Boomerang and Duo. With the new OTA update of Instagram, users will be able to trim Boomerang as well as adjust its speed and length.

“With the help of an Instagram camera, you will be able to express yourself and share what you are thinking, feeling about your friends. Boomerang is a special format of feature camera. Boosting this creativity, Instagram will get an opportunity to express itself in new ways in the Boomerang feature that it uses every day. ” Company said in a statement.

Instagram implemented this new law with the aim of following US law. For this reason, it is very important to be at least 13 years of age to open an Instagram account. After implementing this rule, Instagram said in a blog that the purpose of implementing it is to keep younger users away from the reach of Instagram. The company said that because of this rule, children will stay away from Instagram content and safe. Apart from this, knowing the age will allow Instagram users to experience the content according to their age.