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How much time have you spent on Instagram today?
This question may seem like an invasion of privacy from your average helicopter parent, but the meaning behind this question goes much further. According to Yale Medicine, teenagers who use social media at least three hours a day have twice the risk of depression and anxiety.
Gallop News reports that 51% of U.S. teenagers spend at least four hours daily on social media.
As preteens enter the world of social media, these risks pose a massive threat to our youth. In light of these sobering trends, Instagram is finally making an effort to protect teen users.
In September, Instagram announced its new type of account for users between the ages 13 and 17 with restrictions only their parents can deactivate. It’s taken Instagram 14 years, but teens can at last experience the bare minimum of feeling safe on social media.
This new project will block sensitive content, prevent direct messages from strangers and remind teens to close the app after 60 minutes. Teens will still be able to post and view their friends’ Halloween posts, while also protecting them against dangers that aren’t always obvious to the adolescent eye.
The passage of the Kids Online Safety Act in July placed the pressure needed to spearhead these changes. The new law forces social media companies to introduce unique measures to protect minors from mental health risks, nudity, graphic self-harm and other dangerous exposure. No longer could Instagram ignore its flawed system. The company had to make a move.
While older teenagers may whine about their limited screen time, they’ll thank Mark Zuckerburg in 10 years when they haven’t seen traumatizing content and don’t have an addiction to social media.
If you’re thinking that sensitive content, like nudity or graphic self-harm, doesn’t really show up on a teenager’s social media, think again. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 64% of adolescents are exposed to sensitive content in the media.
The new “Hidden Words” setting in Instagram will combat this issue. The system will hide potentially triggering words, images or even comments from teenagers’ feeds.
To further steer teens away from these phrases, Instagram is offering teens the ability to personalize their Explore pages with a prompt asking them to choose potential topics of interest. A teenager who really wants to learn the best chocolate chip cookie recipe can choose cooking as an interest. Teens who want to see recaps of Monday Night Football can select sports as one of their interests.
Teenagers will be able to actually see posts they want to see and not explicit content they definitely don’t.
Not only do these changes prevent trauma, but they fight back at lengthy screen times. Gone is the nightly doom scrolling. Now, Instagram’s new Sleep Mode, lasting from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., will help teenagers peel their eyes away from their phones long enough to get their CDC-recommended eight to 10 hours of sleep.
Sleep mode will silence notifications, send auto-replies to any unread messages and notify that it’s time for the teen to close the app.
Doing your nightly scroll on TikTok may seem necessary to wind down for bed — it’s not. “Just five more minutes” can turn 10 p.m. into 3 a.m. in the blink of an eye. Wasting this time gives you maybe three hours of chaotic sleep before you have to wake up and start your day all over again. Even more tired than you were the day before.
The next logical thought is that teens could just lie about their age to slip past these restrictions. Instagram says no.
Currently, the company is developing an age-estimation analyzer that’ll hopefully be able to detect teens who’ve lied about their age. If there’s detection of an age change in a teen’s account, the teen must submit a video selfie to verify their age.
Teens could also ask their parents to lift the restrictions off their child’s account, but one piece of advice teenager-to-teenager: don’t.
Don’t take the risk that you could see sensitive content about suicide or eating disorders. Don’t take the risk that you could stay up all night comparing yourself to a picture-perfect content creator. Don’t take the risk that you could abuse your freedoms of social media.
Your mind is still forming its sense of identity and sense of worth during your teenage years, according to Yale Medicine. You may be old enough to park your car in the East parking lot, but that doesn’t mean you’re immune to the harm of social media.
Just like kids ride a tricycle before they can ride a bicycle, allow Instagram to put the training wheels on teens’ social media accounts. It’s pretty messed up if parents, who are supposed to foster a positive learning environment, turn off these life-saving restrictions.
After all, a child can get much worse than a scraped knee on the internet.
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