The new accounts went into effect in the US, Canada, UK and Australia from September 17.
According to a statement on the website of Instagram owner Meta, the new accounts will come into force in the European Union towards the end of 2024.
Meta officials said that “youth accounts” will be available in Turkey, along with other countries, starting in January.
As part of the new measures, the accounts of “young account” users will automatically be private, so only followers they accept will be able to see and interact with the content they share.
Likewise, users under the age of 18 will only be able to message people they follow.
With this feature, Instagram will also filter content that teens may encounter in the Explore and Reels areas, so that this age group will be less exposed to “sensitive content” such as violent content or cosmetic product ads.
“Youth accounts” will also issue time warnings to users under the age of 18. In this context, users who exceed 60 minutes per day will be sent notifications telling them to exit the application.
Accounts under the age of 18 will also enter “sleep mode” between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. During this time, notifications will be muted and messages will be auto-replied.
Parents of underage users will be able to monitor their accounts, manage their children’s settings or allow them to manage themselves, and see what content their children have selected for their titles.
Parents will also be able to see which users their children have messaged with in the last week, but will not be able to access the content of the messages.
