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Teenagers have a lot to deal with as it is, managing their hormones while carving out their own identities separate from their parents.

They really don’t need even more adults in their lives, especially those they don’t know and don’t want to know.

That’s why Instagram is taking a stand against “potential” child predators with a specially designed algorithm that will keep the creeps in their lane.

Gizmodo reports that the social media platform is also introducing other changes to “make Instagram less of a cesspool of awful content for awful people”.

Firstly, and I am sure parents are rejoicing, Instagram announced it will be changing the default account settings for users under the age of 16 to “private” as soon as they set up an account.

This setting essentially only allows those who follow an account to see the user’s content and allows the user to review who gets to follow them.

The teens might fight against it because they’ll want their accounts “public” so that they can gain followers, but Instagram wants them to think of privacy first:

“Wherever we can, we want to stop young people from hearing from adults they don’t know, or that they don’t want to hear from,” Instagram wrote in a corporate blog announcing the changes.

“Historically, we asked young people to choose between a public account or a private account when they signed up for Instagram, but our recent research showed that they appreciate a more private experience.”

Having fewer older creeps slide into DMs sounds like a good plan.

Of course, the option to change the privacy settings will be there, so they can change back to being public if they see fit.

In that instance, though, the app will remind them of the perks of being private:

“[Instagram will] show them a notification highlighting the benefits of a private account,” and will walk them through how to change their privacy settings.

So, that’s the teens sorted.

But what about the other ways an unsavoury type might find younger accounts?

That’s where Instagram’s new algorithm comes in, which will:

…pick out adult accounts flagged as engaging in “potentially suspicious behaviour,” such as adult accounts recently “blocked or reported by a young person.”

When those accounts get flagged, Instagram will no longer show teen accounts on that adult’s Explore, Reels, or “Accounts Suggested For You” pages; and if that adult happens to find younger people’s accounts by searching for their usernames, Instagram will block the adult’s ability to follow them, or interact with the younger user at all.

That sounds pretty neat. Let’s just hope it works and doesn’t become another algorithm that targets innocent people because of incorrect profiling.

Besides these older DM sliders, advertisers across Instagram are also getting a little finger wiggle from the company.

In a few weeks, they won’t be allowed to target teens using the “bevvy of data that they might be collecting on these younger users”.

Rather, ads will be restricted to information like a teen’s age, gender, and location to target them:

“We already give people ways to tell us that they would rather not see ads based on their interests or on their activities on other websites and apps, such as through controls within our ad settings,”

Instagram wrote. “But we’ve heard from youth advocates that young people may not be well equipped to make these decisions. We agree with them, which is why we’re taking a more precautionary approach in how advertisers can reach young people with ads.”

However, as soon as a teen turns 18, ad targeting can resume as normal.

Whether an 18-year-old will be ready to understand the company’s complex privacy policy at that stage is up for debate.

Facebook, which owns Instagram, has made a good move to avoid stricter regulations from outside parties in the future by ‘offering users more choice’.

Still, a long way to go before it rivals Apple, though.

[source:gizmodo]