COLUMBUS, Ohio — Meta, Instagram’s parent company, met with community members in Columbus on Wednesday to discuss the social media platform's new “teen accounts” setting.
The event was part of a national series aimed at helping parents navigate conversations surrounding safely using devices.
Teen accounts are a new experience for teenagers online which put safety restrictions on any account with a user under the age of 18.
It was launched in September and is expected to be rolled out in the coming months.
“Before I had no idea what was going on, I didn't know how to work everything," said parent Nicole Lesnick.
The three main priorities of the new safety features are centered around content, contact and time.
“We can see in real-time what these kids are doing,” said Lesnick.
Many like Lesnick had concerns about their teenagers on social media and were unsure how to monitor their use.
The features will determine the appropriate content that teens are ingesting, restrict who teens can contact and limit the time allowed on the app.
“With teen accounts, we put you in a private account which means you have to be following that person in order to contact them to message them,” said Meta Safety Policy Manager Kira Wong O’Connor.
According to the American Psychological Association, teens spend nearly five hours daily on social media, with 41% of teens with the highest social media use rating their overall mental health as poor.
To prevent teens from staying up all night getting notifications, a sleep mode is enabled between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. to mute all notifications.
In schools, educators stay informed about safety concerns.
“As social media is getting bigger and bigger, I have so many parents come to me as a concerned parent saying my kid is doing x, y and z online. The majority of these conversations are happening on the internet so I’m having these conversations with parents like maybe you need to put more protection on your phones,” said Rebecca Hammer, principal of KIPP Elementary.