by Kate Auletta

Meta, the parent company of Instagram, announced on Tuesday, September 17th that the company has introduced teen accounts for the popular app. The purpose, of course, is to protect younger kids from both overuse and bullying on the photo-sharing app, and the company is giving parents a lot more control over how their kids interact on Instagram.

Instagram now separates teens into two camps: 13-15 year olds, and 16 and 17 year olds. There are different, more stringent guardrails for the former than the latter, but the biggest change happening on Tuesday is that all teens — first in the United States, Canada, the UK and Australia — will be automatically placed in teen accounts… even if they have an existing account. If a teen already has a supervised account, their parents will be notified of the request and can approve or deny it, too.

As part of the changes, parents will now be able to see who their teens have messaged with in the past seven days, but in a nod to privacy, won’t be able to read the messages themselves. Teens will be able to pick out of 30 interests for topics they want to see more of on the platform in an effort to show teens more of what they’re into, and less of what they’re not. There will be unavoidable sleep modes and reminders to put away the app after a certain periods of time, too.

As Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart, a pediatric psychologist and mom of two notes, these accounts “give them the freedom to connect with friends and explore, but with a little more protection in place. That balance of freedom and boundaries is exactly what teens need, especially when we’re not watching over their shoulders 24/7.”

It’s all in an attempt to guide teens into the realities of social media in a safer space than before. And, as Naomi Gleit, Meta’s head of product, told Scary Mommy, “Every family is different. Some parents and some teens might be older and want more supervision, some parents and teens might be younger and want less, so hopefully the product offers that flexibility.”

Scary Mommy spoke at length with Gleit about the research behind the changes, the rollout and more.

Watch our video conversation below.