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CNN
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On Tuesday, Instagram announced its most drastic move yet to protect young users from the dangers of its platform. The company introduced new “teen account” settings that will automatically make millions of teen accounts private and limit the type of content those users can see on the app.

The change in the way Instagram allows teenagers to use the platform comes nearly three years after the controversial “Facebook Papers” first drew widespread attention to the risks the platform poses to young users.

The new restrictions are also designed to encourage teens to exercise parental supervision over the app. Instagram will automatically apply the new “teen account” settings to all users under 18. After the update, 16- and 17-year-old users will be able to manually revert the app back to their preferred settings, but 13- to 15-year-old users will need parental consent for such changes.

The new “teen account” settings build on more than 30 wellbeing and parental oversight tools that parent company Meta has rolled out in recent years, such as “take a break” prompts and restrictions on “age-inappropriate” content like posts about eating disorders. Despite these earlier updates, the company continues to face criticism for putting too much responsibility for safety in the hands of parents and, in some cases, teens themselves. The parental oversight tools, for example, relied on teens letting their parents know they were using the app.

Pressure on Meta to do more to protect teens increased again after a new Facebook employee and whistleblower, Arturo Bejar, testified at a Senate subcommittee hearing in November that Meta’s top executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, had ignored warnings for years about dangers to teens on its platforms.

Court documents from recent lawsuits against the company also allege that Zuckerberg repeatedly obstructed initiatives to benefit teenagers, that Meta knowingly refused to close accounts of children under 13, and that the company facilitated child sexual abuse.

At a Senate hearing in January, Zuckerberg apologized to families who said their children had been harmed by social media.

Meta says the recent changes aim to “address parents’ biggest concerns: who their teens are communicating with online, what content they’re seeing, and whether they’re using their time well.”

The update to “teen accounts” means that accounts for users under 18, both new and existing, will automatically be set to private and have the strictest messaging settings. The overhaul will allow teens to only receive messages from people they’re already connected with. Instagram will also limit the number of people teens can tag in photos or mention in comments to those they follow.

Additionally, teens will be subject to Instagram’s most restrictive content control settings. The change limits the type of “sensitive” content teens can see on their Explore page and in Reels, such as posts promoting cosmetic procedures.

Instagram had already begun implementing this strategy on a more limited scale earlier this year.

Teens will also receive time limit reminders prompting them to exit the app after spending an hour on it each day. It will also put the app into “sleep mode” by default, muting notifications between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. and sending automatic replies to direct messages.

Instagram plans to apply the changes to all teen accounts in select countries, including the US, starting next week.

The app will also add new parental control features, allowing parents to see which accounts their teen has recently messaged, set total daily time limits for their teens’ Instagram usage, prevent them from using Instagram at night or other set times, and see what topics their teens want to see content about in the app.

The changes are expected to be made to all youth accounts in the US, UK, Canada and Australia within the next 60 days, before rolling out to other countries later this year and next year.

But the effectiveness of some of these changes is hampered by a simple fact: Meta cannot determine with certainty whether it is actually a parent monitoring a teen’s accounts or, say, an older friend. Meta does not conduct formal parental verification, but says it relies on signals such as the adult user’s birth date and how many other accounts they manage to decide whether Meta can monitor a teen’s account, a spokesperson said.

Meta has also long been criticized for not doing more to prevent teens from lying about their age when creating a new account to bypass security restrictions.

The company says it is implementing artificial intelligence technology aimed at identifying accounts belonging to teenagers who may have mistakenly provided an adult’s birth date.

Meta says the new features were developed in consultation with its Safety Advisory Board, which consists of independent online safety experts and organizations and a group of youth advisors, as well as based on feedback from other teens, parents and government officials.