The Netmums Podcast - S15 Ep11: Teen Accounts: Meta’s Tara Hopkins explains the new Instagram tools to make social safer

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

In this special bonus episode of The Netmums Podcast, guest host Louise Burke, our Editorial Director, delves into a crucial topic for modern parents: keeping our teens safe online. Joined by Tara Hopkins, Meta's Global Director of Public Policy and a fellow parent, they discuss the success of the Teen Accounts on Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger, designed to protect young users as they navigate social media. The conversation highlights: - Understanding Teen Accounts: Tara explains the features such as automatic protective settings that ensure a safer experience for users under 18. - Tools for Parents: How parental supervision tools work, allowing parents to monitor their teens' activity while respecting their privacy. - Navigating the Digital Landscape: Tara shares insights on how parents can effectively engage with their teens about social media, including the importance of having open conversations and staying curious about their online world. - New Features on the Horizon: Listeners will learn about upcoming tools being rolled out, including restrictions on live broadcasting and nudity filters, aimed at enhancing safety for younger users. - Tara reflects on her journey as a parent navigating social media with her own children, offering relatable anecdotes and practical advice. Join us for this informative discussion that aims to empower you with the knowledge and tools needed to support your teens in the digital age. It’s definitely listening time well spent – it’ll arm you with everything you need to know to parent better. Stay connected with Netmums for more parenting tips, community support, engaging content: Website: netmums.com / Instagram: @netmums  Proudly produced by Decibelle Creative / @decibelle_creative

Hello and welcome to a special bonus episode of the Netmums podcast, the parenting podcast that is committed to supporting you through the highs and lows of parenthood. We believe that parenting is easier when you have access to the right knowledge and support and we aim to offer everything parents need to feel confident and informed. I'm Louise Burke, the Editorial Director of Netmums and a Parent to Three Kids and today we're diving into a topic that's right at the heart of so many modern parenting dilemmas, keeping our teens safe online. Now whether your teen is already scrolling, swiping and story posting or

you're just gearing up for the next phase of parenting, we've got something important for you today. We're thrilled to be joined by Tara Hopkins, Metta's global director of public policy and a fellow parent, to talk about Metta's teen accounts which they introduced on Instagram last year and now on Facebook and Messenger and the new features designed to protect our kids while they explore social media. Tara, welcome to the show. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. Let's start from the top. Let's explain to our parent community just exactly what are teen accounts and also the thinking behind Instagram and Meta launching the teen accounts.

Yeah, absolutely. And again, thanks so much for having me. I think it's gonna be a really, hopefully it's gonna be a really important conversation. We can go quite deep on some of these things. So Instagram teen accounts, we launched last September, September 2024 in the US, in the UK, Australia, Canada. And now we're rolling them out globally.

And in essence, what they are is that we automatically place teens into our most restrictive settings on Instagram, when they're in the Instagram teen account experience. And that means that we're restrictive and more protective on who can contact a teenager, the content that they see to make sure that it's age appropriate for them and for their age, and the time that they spend on Instagram. And the reason we did this was we've had, I mean, for years, like I've been at Instagram for six years, but so well before my time for over a decade, we've been building tools for teens and for parents to keep them safe while they're using Instagram. But what we found was parents were like overwhelmed basically and I think we

all we all know and feel what that's like as a parent and so in the last couple years we went out we really had very intentional conversations with parents about what are the things that you're most worried about and what can we do what can we build how can we bring this together to take the burden off of parents and so what we did with Tina K we build? How can we bring this together to take the burden off of parents? And so what we did with teen accounts was exactly that, because teen accounts for any teen who's under the age of 18, they're automatically defaulted into these more protective experiences. Nothing the parent has to do, they can just know that in the background, if their teenager is under the age of 18 and in the UK,

they have by now been moved across into the teen account experience. What we've also done is we've differentiated between the older and the younger teens and what their experience should be. And again, that was based on expert advice, academics, child psychologists working with organisations like Parents' Own in the UK. And again, listening to parents, like a parent is things very differently about their 13 or 14 year old boy or daughter or son than they do about their 17 and a half year old son or daughter. And so what we really wanted to do was respond to that. So when you're in the teen account experience, everyone under the age of 18, but if you want to change any of the settings to a less restrictive or less protective version of

those settings, if you're under the age of 16, you can't do that. You can't do that without getting the parent to approve that change. And we think that is the right way to do it. If you're that older teen, you have a bit more autonomy, you're a bit older, you know, you're coming up to your kind of adulthood. But if you're between the ages of 13 and 15, you cannot change any of these more protective settings without getting the parent involved in the conversation. And the last thing we've done is we've provided a parental supervision experience,

which so if the teen does want to change any of those settings, the parent is asked to approve it through this parental supervision settings. But if the parent wants to go in and set up parental supervision independent of that, they can. And that is again, responding to parents. Some parents want to have more insight. And so in parental supervision, you can go that bit deeper. So you can see who your teenager has been messaging over the last seven days. You can't see the messages themselves, but you can see who the accounts are

that your teenager has been messaging over the last seven days. And you can do things like you can look at the dashboard and see the amount of time your teenager has been spending on Instagram. You can also see who's following your teen and who they're following back on Instagram. So you can go a little bit deeper if you want to, but we also, as I said, want to take the burden off parents

so that they know that their teen is automatically defaulted, but if they want to go a bit deeper and have more insight, that's also available to them. As a parent of tween, I haven't got teenagers yet, but I have got a tween who's absolutely desperate to get onto social media, but I'm trying to keep her off of it as much as I can. Yeah, but even to hear you talk through that, it is reassuring to hear that there are these inbuilt, automated tools as soon as they sign up. How successful have these tools been? Yeah, it's a great question.

So we, as I said, we launched it in English-speaking markets last September. And then we've been globally rolling it out over the last few months, and it still has actually some ways to go in some of our bigger markets like India and Japan. But what we are able to announce is that we now have over 50 million teenagers who have been moved into the teen account experience

on Instagram, which we're really pleased with. It's a big number. I think it's actually 54 million teens are now in the teen account experience. So that's just technologically a huge feat because behind the scenes, we're just automatically moving teens across. And that means that every teen under the age of 18 who's in the teen account experience, their account has been set to private by default. And all of these settings, like they cannot be contacted by someone, they don't know who

they're not already connected with, again, move automatically into that experience. So technologically, it's like actually quite a big lift. What we're really pleased, it's been going really well, it hasn't been kind of too buggy. And that 54 million, I think, just shows it. And we expect that to really increase globally as we go to some of those even bigger markets. The other thing that we've seen, which I think is really encouraging, is that 97% of the teenagers that we've moved into the teen account experience who are between the ages of 13 and 15, they're staying in those more protective experiences. They're not actually asking the parent for approval to go into those, the less restrictive version of that.

I think that's really good news because it means the teens are, either they're not noticing, which is fine by us, they're just enjoying Instagram in the exact same way they were before, they're connecting, they're having fun, they're sharing some fun things with their friends and loved ones.

But yeah, they're not trying to ask the parent for that approval. So we think that's really good news. We'll see how that keeps tracking. We do also encourage parents to set up the parental supervision, but you kind of know when you have a teen yourself, whether or not you want to go that little bit deeper, and we would encourage parents to set up parental supervision, but you kind of, you know, when you have a teen yourself, whether or not you want to go that little bit deeper. And we would encourage parents to set up parental

supervision, but also just that knowledge in the background. We're all busy parents. I'm a parent who are tween and neen, that is just happening behind the scenes. So now we are, we're really pleased with how it's, with how it's tracking. I would say that the work, honestly, the work will never be done. And what we're trying to do is use the teen account infrastructure, I suppose, to add on additional tools, which I can talk about and go into in a little bit detail as well.

Well, yeah, we'll come up to those. You mentioned before about, you know, all parents now are time-poor and we're busy. And to be honest, we're all juggling way too much. And while it's great to have so much information at our fingertips, whether it be through social or online or podcasts or TVs from psychologists and charities and all various experts. It's all brilliant. Sometimes it feels overwhelming. I think ultimately, like you just said, no one knows your kid as well as you know them as well. So I think sometimes a lot of this parental

supervision, the tools are great, but apply them to your own child. You know your child. the tools are great, but apply them to your own child. You know your child. Some of the parents in our community do find navigating technology or navigating their teens through the digital age quite complex and overwhelming and daunting if they're not used to using technology themselves. And also it's just another thing, right? It's another thing on the list to go, oh, give me a minute, let me get my glasses, let me have a look at these tools. That said, I did speak to some parents in our community and they were saying how easy the tools were to navigate. They found it very easy and informed sort of platform to just sort of make their choices that they wanted to do as a parent.

What would you say to those parents who maybe are less informed or maybe or even putting too much trust into their teenagers? Yeah, it's a great question. Look, I feel overwhelmed. I have a 15 yearyear-old daughter and a 12-year-old son. And I feel overwhelmed by it. And I work in the tech industry. So I just would say to your listeners, be kind to yourself. It's a complicated world to navigate. And that's why we on the Instagram side

are trying to make it just that bit easier for parents and really listening to them. I would say there's a few things. We have used language. We did a lot of research about how to speak to parents and how to speak to teens when we're setting up teen accounts. So every teenager gets sent a notification to explain what's going on and why they're being moved

into the teen account experience. And we've used language that really resonated with teens. So to make sure that they appreciate that nothing's going to change, it's still gonna have the same Instagram, it's just gonna be a bit more protective and we think that they will appreciate it. Like teens like to be protected.

They might pretend otherwise, but actually they do, particularly those younger teens. So we've used language and similarly used language that really speaks to parents as well. I would say we've seen some research and it's kind of mind-boggling that teens nowadays and adults as well. I would say we've seen some research and it's kind of mind-boggling that teens nowadays and adults as well, some of us have up to 40 apps on our phones. And these aren't necessarily social media apps, like the

school might have an app and you're like Google Maps. Or three. Exactly. Sports clubs, like there is a lot going on on your phone. And I think that that's why we really wanted to take the burden away and just automatically default teens into it, but also give parents if they do want to do a deeper dive and see, have more insights, that's why we've set up parental supervision

in a way that actually does give parents in a really simple and easy way, access to be able to set up the parental supervision tool and do that really easily. I would encourage parents if you're not already on Instagram to be on Instagram or any other social media app that your teenagers are using because it's just important to know the functionality of it and how it works etc so that you can have those offline conversations. And then the other thing I would do is just encourage parents to look at this Instagram slash teen accounts,

and there's the family center, the Meta family center. And there are some really, really helpful guidance out there, how to have conversations with your teenagers, how to start conversations with your teenagers, how to have conversations with female teenagers versus male teenagers, because they use it in very different ways. I see my son uses gaming far more than my daughter and so try to really help parents

to navigate that and make it just that little bit simpler. But I would say like we're all in it together and if you have conversations with your, I think you'll find that everyone is finding it hard. But look, our children are, they're digital natives. And I certainly, I'm a child of the 1970s, I'm not a digital native, but my teenagers are. And you really have to meet them where they are. I think that's really important, but hopefully that you feel that there are certain apps

that you do feel that burden has been taken away and you feel a certain level of confidence when your teenager is using that particular app. We hope this instance Instagram that you feel good about it and you know the behind the scenes that we're we're taking it incredibly seriously. It's interesting how you make the comparison between us as parents maybe not being digitally native, and the kids are. And your stat earlier about the 97% of 13 to 15-year-olds are sticking within the supervision tools and not even requesting to go beyond them. That doesn't massively surprise me, I have to say, just because I feel like young teenagers now, there's so much awareness around fake news, inappropriate content, harmful content. I think some of those kids in that

age group are a little bit scared of seeing something they don't want to. So yeah, it doesn't surprise me massively that they would challenge those tools so much. I think they almost would welcome them. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think when you speak in their language about it, you know, when we did research with teenagers and we talked to teenagers all the time, they didn't love some of the language to begin with, the idea that they were going to be more protected or we were doing it for safety. And so therefore we actually changed some of the language to begin with, the idea that they were going to be more protected or we were doing it for safety. And so therefore we actually changed some of the language so

that it was basically saying to them, you're going to have exactly the same experience you've had before, but probably better because you're going to be able to spend your time on the things that interest you and you're not going to see content that either doesn't interest you or isn't appropriate. So we have a sensitive content control, so that is set to see less. So this is content which, you know, we have very strict rules around what you can and can't post on Instagram and on meta-services more broadly.

And so when we find that content, we remove it. But the sensitive content control is actually about content that's just sensitive, as I said, by its very nature. It's not content that violates our policies. And an example I often use for this is a video for a movie like The Godfather. So, you know, there's us who remember it, like it's an extraordinary movie, but it's violent.

And so if you're a 13 year or 14 year old, you don't want to necessarily come across that kind of content. We would categorize that in the sense of content control. So we have turned on to see less. And really what we want is that teenagers are seeing content that interests them, that brings them joy. The vast majority of teenagers are using our platforms

or just having fun with it, spending 10 or 15 minutes then going off and doing something else. We absolutely don't want them to come across something that's upsetting or they don't want to see, but we also want them to know that if they do, it's okay to have that conversation with the parents and that there are ways of going and blocking certain accounts, et cetera. So we want to give them that protective experience. We also want them to know that if something does come across

their feed, whether it's on Instagram or anywhere else, that actually they can talk to people about it and there are actions that they can take to give them a bit of agency around it as well. Let's be honest, there are teams who don't quite play to the rule book, and they will sign up for an Instagram account with a fake date of birth. I know you've had measures in place since September with the teen account tools, but do you just want to clarify exactly

how you're navigating those teenagers that may be signing up to Instagram with a fake date of birth? Yeah, yeah, so again, it's a great question. We've all been teens, we've all tried to circumnavigate systems in the past and I think again for parents out there to know that there are many, many people working across Instagram and Met. I think we have over 40,000 people now who work on safety and integrity issues. We were all teens once, like we know what teens are up to. So I think just at that level of reassurance. So there are a number of ways we do this.

We say we have like a multi-layered, it sounds a bit jargonistic, but a multi-layered approach to knowing and understanding age. The first thing is we ask for age when you first join Instagram and we do really encourage people to give us their correct age because then we can build an age appropriate experience with the knowledge of that age. But we do recognize that some might do it accidentally

or they might misstate it for different reasons. And so at the moment if a teenager tries to, is under the age of 18, and they try to change their account to, over the age of 18, so they try to change their date of birth, the system will know that it actually isn't their date, it isn't their birthday. And we'll ask them to go through an age assurance process.

And that is basically a video selfie or to send in ID. And the video selfie is from, it's a third party. It's called Yoti. It's actually a British company where they upload a video selfie. That data then gets removed. It's privacy protective. And then the system can see whether or not

the match of that video selfie is to the age that they're telling us they have on their account. If it doesn't match, obviously we're not gonna let them change their date of birth. Similarly, if you're reported, if an account is reported to us, pretty much for anything, the reviewers will go through a process of looking at the age that the account says it is and actually some of the signal in the account as to whether or not they are that age. And again, we'll ask them to go through the age assurance process. And then the third thing we are doing actually, we are investing quite heavily in enhanced AI to find teenagers who in the past may have

misstated their age. We're going to be launching this quite shortly in the US to begin with, whereby we're going to be able to find those teenagers and then move them automatically into the teen account experience. It's important that we get this right because we don't want happening is that we are moving 23 and 24 year olds into the teen account experience. That's a horrible, you know, that'll be a, you know, a gluggy experience for them to have.

We wanna make sure we get this right, which is why we're really investing in the technology around it. And then the last thing I'd say, and this is beyond meta and beyond Instagram is, as I said before, we're hearing from teens that some of them have multiple apps that they're using on their phones.

We think there's another level here that we can use to be able to give parents that peace of mind, which is at the App Store level. So that means, again, a bit jargonistic, that means that Apple or Google or we, Meta, have an App Store because we've got Reality Labs, we've got devices, you know, we've got Reality Labs devices that we also produce. That when a teenager gets the phone for the first time, and often actually it might be before they're 13, it might be when they're 11 or 12,

that seems to be kind of the age in the UK when you're gonna finishing your primary school. Yeah, it's 91% of 11 year olds own a smartphone now. It seems to have become like a rite of passage, which I felt that pressure when my daughter was 11. Same. So you share the age of the owner of that phone, or the user of that phone when you buy the phone,

whether it's a photo phone or with Apple or whoever. And what we're asking for, actually, is that that signal is shared at the App Store level. And actually, the App Store is asking for parents of any teen under the age of 16 to give parental approval to download an app. And that's not to say that we won't take our responsibility seriously. We will continue to invest in AI technology to use our multilayered approach to age.

But I think, again, speaking to so many parents, you do feel overwhelmed. And there's a privacy aspect to this as well. We don't want to have to share your date of birth and IDs and things like that with multiple apps. So much easier if you could just do it at the App Store level and then that signal is shared with all the apps that are using on that App Store. And then we'll know and understand

the age we think you are on our app absolutely matches the age that the app store thinks you are. And I think that will give us, and also I think really give parents a sense of, again, a sense of easing the burden that they know that the right age is being shared. It doesn't have to be done too often, and that all the apps are creating content knowing exactly the age of that teenager.

I think that would be really revolutionary and really would change, I think, the way the industry works together on this, but also how parents will feel a bit of a sense of ease and take some of that burden off their hands. I totally agree with that. I think to lessen the burden for parents anyway, whether it be default settings when you purchase the phone or something that is flagged at the purchase level, it's definitely a way forward. Yeah, there are these moments that we really think could be, we could probably utilise them, that the information is shared at that particular moment in a really, really effective way. Yeah, yeah, because I think we're all responsible, aren't we?

It's not just parents who are responsible here. But today we're talking as well because in the next couple of months you're rolling out some new tools within the teen accounts. Do you want to talk me through some of the new features that you have, that you're introducing to the new teen accounts? Yes, absolutely. So as I said, we've built an infrastructure which we're calling the teen accounts experience on Instagram for everyone under the age of 18.

We're gonna be adding two more default settings into the teen account experience. One is the ability to go live on Instagram. So IG live for those of you who might be familiar or those of you unfamiliar, it's an ability to be able to go live kind of in broadcast mode, I suppose, on Instagram. And then people who follow you can follow along to your live and they can comment, etc. Honestly, it's really fun. And a lot of people use it. A lot of creators use it.

We've had that defaulted that if you're under the age of 18, you actually can't go live. We've had that defaulted that if you're under the age of 18, you actually can't go live. What we're doing now is that if you're under the age of 16, you cannot go live unless you get that parental approval to do so. Some teenagers might wanna do it for like really fun reasons. That's great, but I think it does speak to the fact that if they do, they should be having a conversation

with their parents and saying, I wanna do an IG live. Are you okay with that? And then the parent can say, what does that actually mean? Who can contact with you, who can connect with you while you're on IG live and why? So we're defaulting that so if you're under the age of 16, you can't go live unless you've got parental approval. And the second one is the nudity filter on Instagram,

which again, your listeners probably don't know that, but we've had, we've long had a nudity filter on Instagram, which again, your listeners probably don't know, but we've had, we've long had a nudity filter on Instagram. And this is in your IG direct messages. And if you're under the age of 18, again, this is defaulted to aunt. So it means that you, we blur any nudity in your, in your direct messages. Again, I just want to reassure parents out there that we have really strict rules about sharing of nudity, sharing of any kind of sexual content on any of the surfaces, like posting, etc. But in IG, the nudity filter is in messages. And so if you're under the age of 16, again, you cannot change that filter, any of the settings on that filter,

unless you're having a, unless you get parental approval. I would fully imagine this is one of those ones where 97% of teens don't ask their parents and just stay in those more protective settings. And we hope they do, because we don't want them to come across content, you know, that's inappropriate or accidental in, particularly in their direct messages,

because that can feel very, very personal. So we're adding both of those new, without new tools, particularly in their direct messages, because that can feel very, very personal. So we're adding both of those new, without new tools, the tools we've had for quite a long time, but we're just making it that bit harder and more protective for teens that they cannot change any of these settings

without parents being involved in the conversation. And the last thing is that we're rolling out teen accounts or launching teen accounts, I should say, in both Facebook and on Messenger. So we really want this to be what we call a family of apps tool. Parents maybe are a bit more familiar with Facebook than they are with Instagram.

Teens maybe use Instagram more than they use Facebook, but actually, we've got a lot of teens on Facebook as well. And so we're rolling it out on both Facebook and Messenger. I'm sure the nudity filter will be very welcomed by parents because, I mean, that's sort of your worst fear. Worrying your young child seeing any harmful image. And I sort of explained to my tween, like, once you see it, you can't unsee it. And it is a traumatic sort of image that leaves a bit

of an imprint in their brains, I think. So I think that would be a welcome feature. Absolutely. It's really important. And so it's blurred. So you can't, you know, you can't see it. And as I said, it's something very, very personal about your direct messages. We absolutely recognise that. And that's why we've taken that step to, you know, make it impossible for a teen who's under the age of 16 to change that filter without having the conversation with their parents, as I said. I don't imagine that conversation is gonna happen,

but you know, who knows? It might, and hopefully it will lead to some good discussions at home. Yeah. Something that's sprung up as we've been talking, we talked about language, or you were talking about the language you've used and you sort of really worked hard at reviewing the use of language when

building these teen safety tools. And I keep hearing the word restriction, which I'm clear there are restrictions, right? But when you're dealing with teens, teens don't like being restricted. So I guess that's a challenge when you've been building these safety tools because you want to protect those young minds and those young people, but you have also got to bear in mind that they are growing into young adults,

the sort of older end of the teens, haven't you? Can you explain how you've been able to continue a level of trust in relationship between parent and teen with some of the tools that you've created? Because I know there's certain levels of what parents can see. Exactly, yeah. So, yeah, and I think this is one of the things that's really quite

new and different about Instagram teen accounts is that differentiation between the experience that the younger teen has and the experience that we're giving the older teen. And again, very much based on expert advice that not every teenager is the same, let alone a teenager who's 13 versus a teenager who's 17. And what we want to do is create an environment for teenagers who are younger that is protective, all teenagers, all teenagers under the age of 18, I should clarify.

But that if you're that older teenager, you're 16 or 17 years old, actually, you do have a little bit of autonomy, a little bit more autonomy to change some of those settings. But parental supervision actually is for any teenager under the age of 18. And again, we built this because you know your teen best. You might have an extremely mature 14-year-old or 15-year-old

daughter or son. And you might have a 17-year-old who actually hasn't really matured yet. And these things can show very differently in very different times for teens. I know with myself and my I've got three brothers how we all developed and changed and became more mature, very, very different stages.

And so parental supervision is for any teenager under the age of 18. And if you are in the parental supervision tool, you can supervise a teenager who is 16 or 17. I think it also honestly really works for parents who might have a neurodiverse child or a child with any kind of special needs where basically they might be

17 but actually maybe it's better for them to be in these more protective settings and as you said when you're in the parental supervision tool you can do a bit more so you get more insights, you can see who's been messaging your teen over the last seven days, you can see who your teen is following, you can also go a bit further with the time restrictions. And that's something we haven't talked about. But with Teenacans, there are two time restrictions that we've built into the experience. One is that after 60 minutes, the teenager gets an oasis

to say, it's enough, and put the phone down, put the app down, I should say. And the second one is sleep mode. And this came up over and over again with experts. So there really is no conclusive evidence or a view that there's a certain amount of time that is right or wrong for your team to spend on social media or gaming or whatever else it might be.

That really does depend on the team and what they're doing with that time. Like if they're kind of endlessly scrolling is the horrible expression, which I hate, but that's probably not good for them. If they're looking at Instagram because they're doing an art project and they're researching,

that might take them an hour and a half on a Saturday. That's probably a very good use of their time. So I think there's really inconclusive evidence about what is the right time limit. And also what they're doing outside of the screen time as well. Exactly. Yeah. So what there is evidence around is sleep and how important sleep is for teens, like teenagers are developing and they really need their sleep as we all know, we've got tweens and teens and well any children. So sleep mode is on between 10pm.m. and 7 a.m. Default is on for everyone under the age of 18.

But if you're in the parental supervision tool, so if you go that kind of bit of a step further, you can actually completely block Instagram using the parental supervision tool for however much time you think your teenager needs to have that time blocked. So it might be during school, it might be at night, that 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. that might be the right amount of time for your teen but actually you can extend

that if you want to and as I said you can make it fully blocking if you're in the parental supervision tool. So we have tried to give those enhanced tools for parents who do wish to be a bit more involved. But even if they're not, these time restrictions are on teen accounts and defaulted to all teens as well. And just to be clear, for a parent to supervise their child's teen account, do they need an Instagram account themselves? And do they operate it from their own handset? Yes, they do. So they do need to have an Instagram account themselves and do they operate it from their own handset? Yes they do. So they do need to have an Instagram account themselves and I should say the teen has to give permission to be supervised by the parent and we think again we think that's important we think it's important

that the teen and the parent are both kind of bought into it and they both want to be in that experience. What you don't want is that a parent kind of forces the teen into it because they, you know, the teen will probably not use Instagram, frankly, or, you know, set up a fake account or something. We don't want that to happen. We really want it to be a good experience for both the teen and the parent.

So we do ask that there's like this, approval is given on both sides to set up the parental supervision. However, if the teen is under the age of 16, I sound a bit like a broken record here, they cannot change any of those settings unless they do set up the parental supervision. So let's say I'm the teen and you're the parent,

I want to change some of my time limits. I want to become, have less restrictive time limits on my Instagram account. And I try to go from having that 60 minute break to having say a 30 minute break. What happens is it'll say, you can't do this without your parental, without parental approval,

click here to get parental approval. So we would set up the supervisory tool. You might give permission. Great, you might say, that's fine. I don't mind. 30 minutes a day, that's OK by me. But then the team might say, haha, I've now set it to a less restrictive time, and then end parental supervision.

If the team does that, they just go back into the more protective settings. The system knows that that's happened, that parental supervision has finished, and we'll just place them back in the more restrictive or the more protective settings. The other example would be private by default. So all teens under the age of 18, when they're in the teen account experience, you know all teens on Instagram in the UK that we know to be under the age of 18, will have a private account by default. And so if the teen says, I want to have a public account, the parent might say, that's fine, we'll do that. I'll give approval through the parental

supervision tool. A couple of months later, the teenager decides that they want to end parental supervision. Fine, they can do that, but their account will be reset back to a private account. So it's really kind of helping the parent know that yeah, they're in this protective. They're in this, you know, parental supervision experience with their team,

but if that ends they just automatically get moved into those more protective experience that they started off with. When when they entered into the teen account experience. OK, well I'm going to take your meta hat off now and put your parent hat on.

I want to talk to parents, Tara. You said before in the interview that you've got two children yourself. You've got a teenager who's 15 and a son who's 12. Yes. So a daughter who's 15 and a son who's 12. And how have you you as a tech professional and someone who's been key in placing these safety measures on Instagram, how do you, how's your journey

been with your children navigating social media use? Yeah, so I mean they are my board, as you would well imagine, particularly my daughter, because she's had social media for a few years, for a couple of years. I'm obviously very strict with my teenage son. He doesn't have social media, he doesn't have Instagram yet. But he games. Will he when he's? I think he will. I think he's got he's naturally curious because his mom works for Instagram. Honestly, I will be in that knowledge, like all other parents in the UK,

that he'll be in the teen account experience. I do have conversations with them about why it's really important to put the correct age on their account and I would reiterate that because while we have ways of finding teens that might not have, who might have misstated their age, it is really important that we know and understand the age of that teen when they're using Instagram. So I have that conversation, I have the same conversation with my teenager's friends as well. I probably board them around it as well. And I do, I use them a bit of a sounding board. I think there's a few things that are interesting. One is that they're probably a bit less worried than,

I obviously work on the kind of, the very small percentage of teenagers who do have a bad experience on Instagram. And we don't want that happening, and we're really always very sorry if your teen does have a negative experience on Instagram. But it is a very, very, very small minority. My teenage daughter or my 15-year-old

will tell me over and over again, if I come and say to her, have you ever come across this? Have you ever come across that? She's always saying, mom, relax, that's not the experience I have. But that's not to say that it's not important. It is.

So they do sometimes kind of ground me a little bit, which is good. I think all parents have, we've been out there in the big, wide world. We worry about our teenagers. We worry about our children. That's our job to do. So my teenage daughter will often do a great job of just reminding me that

actually, you know, she's having a positive experience when she's using social media. And as you say, I think they do actually really appreciate a more protective experience. They want to know that they're having a positive time. And I think that's something that actually they kind of naturally select that to make sure that they're having it. They choose the apps that help them have the best time. So I think they do, particularly as they get older, they really do. They're a bit better maybe at restricting their time than some adults are, including myself, honestly. I think there is a lot of role modeling that I try to do and I think all parents, we struggle with this as well, which is, you know, you'll tell your teenager to put the phone down,

but then you yourself be looking at the phone, but then making excuses for why you'll say, well, I need to respond to this because it's important or whatever. So I think role modeling is important and our teens, I'm sure your listeners, teens are exactly the same, they will hold us to account. They will say, mom, you're on your phone or you're not listening and they're great for that. I have to say they're great for reminding me.

I would also, as I said before, I would encourage people to look at, there's so many resources out there and I know we're all really time restricted, whether you go onto the family center on Meta or onto the parents' own resources center, things like that, there are loads of internet matters, loads of brilliant organizations out there

that have really thought long and hard about what are the things that parents are most concerned about. And even if you spend 10 minutes on a Friday morning just looking at some of this stuff, I find it really good. So one of the things I learned three years ago when we updated our parents' guides on Instagram was having conversations with your teenagers in the car rather than across from each other.

Side by side, yeah. Side by side, watching TV, going for a walk. I find in the car, and I actually found myself coming up with fake reasons to put my daughter in the car, just have a chat. And I think she's onto it now because she's a bit older. But I found that incredibly helpful. And I really did notice that when we were on a walk or in the car or going to the supermarket, actually, sometimes they do open up in a very different way to kind of around the dinner table, which I think does put a lot of pressure on teens. So I do, I try to take my experience into work. I try to not take too much experience from work back home. But I, you know what, I'm, I think like all parents are teens, like I'm so encouraged by their sense of humor,

by actually how they do think about these things. They're much more thoughtful, I think, than we give them credit for. And in fairness, I think schools in the UK have been brilliant at really, really educating our teens about their time on social media and particularly around things like bullying and harassment. Like bullying happens sometimes in school, often in school, and then it you know comes home and then it might be you know

made worse by any kind of social media. But it's an offline as well as an online problem and I think schools are brilliant at really trying to tackle that with assemblies and that kind of thing. So I think I'm encouraged by our teens and how really mature they are around some of these issues. But I do think you're right that they actually really appreciate these tools. They don't really want to think about it. They just want to know what's happening in the background. I was going to ask a parent-to-parent question as well along the lines of experts will often suggest parents should be curious,

be curious in your child's social media use, be curious in what they're doing, what they're interested in, what they're looking at, what they're scrolling. There's a fine line between being curious and sticking your nose in. So, and you know, I'm not saying I've got it right. It's difficult, but what would your advice be to a parent to say, be curious without sort of intervening to a point where your child just then resists any sort of interest or questioning? Yeah, it's a really good question.

I think there's a few things. One is the kind of not to judge or to jump to conclusions when your team does potentially open up about something, about a message they might have been sent or a post they might have seen. They might have not been invited to a party and seen on a social media platform that this party happened and that might upset them. And so I think when they

do come to you to just listen, be in listening mode, I mean, that's kind of a, you know, it sounds easy, doesn't it? And we're all so busy that sometimes it's hard. But I think, you know, taking the time and having the patience to do that. I think more broadly, your question is, it's really, really important because the right of the child, the teenager to privacy, particularly as they're aging up, like as they're moving up the teenage years

is really, really important. And I honestly have struggled with my beautiful little, you know, children becoming teenagers because they do change. You know, they've gone from like smelling lovely and their skin's perfect and everything and it's all starting to change.

And my children listen to this, they're still beautiful. But it's, you know, it's, I think parents struggle with that. And so how you might have responded to your six and seven year old speaking to you or raising a question with you, I think you have to think about it very differently when it's your teen. And as you say, be curious. One of the places where we really thought long and hard about this was about insights into who's messaging your teen.

So I mentioned before, if you're in, if you have set up parental supervision on Instagram, you'll see a dashboard. And the dashboard will show you who your teen has been messaging over the last seven days. And it will also show you who your teen follows on Instagram. We debated long and hard about whether or not we should be giving parents access to messaging itself,

like into the IG so your listeners who might not be using Instagram, we have a messaging part of Instagram. And it's actually really integral to Instagram. If you're liking or reacting to a post, it goes into your direct messages. So, yeah, we thought really long and hard about whether or not that we should be giving parents that access. And again, with experts, we talked about these issues. We really brought in a range of experts through our, we have a youth advisory board and a safety advisory board and talked to them about it because there is a level of privacy that a teen expects to

have, particularly as they're getting older, but there's also a level of understanding and insights that a parent rightly wants to have and know. And so we think we've struck the right balance, where you can see in this dashboard the last seven days and who your teenager has been messaging, and you can see who they're following. You can actually see also who they may have blocked. And then hopefully that allows the parent to have the offline conversation side by side in the car on the way to the supermarket to say,

hey, I noticed that you are messaging this person a lot over the last seven days. What's going on there? Or that you're not messaging them anymore, or that you've blocked this person. How come? Why did you do that? So we hope that it gives parents that level of information

and insight that they can further the conversation without it infringing on the privacy of that young person. They're kind of, in my day, looking into a teenager's diary. We think that's a step too far. We hope we've got it in the right spot. I mean, I'd be keen to understand from your listeners as to whether they do think we've got it in the right place. But it's certainly something that we really try to balance,

that privacy and kind of safety space so that it works for both parents and teens. Sure. You talked as well, just jumping back to a point about you encouraging parents to go on Instagram or any social media or app, whatever your kids are doing, get involved as well and have a look at the content. Some research shows that content that gets displayed, we might find, we might have a different reaction to it than a teenager because the teenagers are digital natives and they've always seen that type of content and used it for consuming that content or ignoring that content or muting

that content. Do you think that would be a piece of advice to parents is to have a good scroll, see some content and don't necessarily feel the fear straight away when you see something because it may be that your child doesn't quite see that content in the same way through the same lens as you. Yeah, look, absolutely. And I pick up my teenager's phone all the time and look at what's called the

explore page on Instagram. That kind of gives me a good sense of because the the kind of the joy of Instagram is that we know your age, we know what you're interested in and we're recommending content to you that's connected to what you're you're interested in. So I do yeah and I you know I think it's you know with the the's approval, like these conversations I think should be had where you're saying like every so often I'm gonna pick up your phone and have a look,

are you okay with that? Yeah, I'm fine with that. I mean, my teenagers would do the same thing with my phone, because they're picking it up and they're looking at a WhatsApp message from my husband or whatever. And so, I think we should all be feel very comfortable with that.

I would say again, what if you have an Instagram account and you're an adult with a certain interest in maybe politics or news or white lotus or whatever you're looking at, you know, very topical at the moment, is that your teenagers are not going to see some of that content because they're in the sensitive content control on Instagram and because we know that they're under the age of 16

and so they're in more of these protective settings. So you shouldn't assume that when you see something on Instagram or you're being recommended an account on Instagram that your teen would come across the same thing. Like that's, you know, we really do try to make the experience very personal to you. And we think that people really find joy in that and find real value in that,

that it's not just the same experience for everyone. But in the Family Center on Met, and I can't exactly remember the name of which article this is, but there's a great one, which is a list of questions, like thought starter kind of questions for your teen. And some of the things like, you know,

if you come across something that you know isn't factually true, what do you do? Like, do you question it? Because my is a, you know, a person born in the 70s. If I see something, I usually go to the BBC to check something. You know, I verify it. So if a teenager comes across anything on any social media and they think, oh, I wonder if going to verify it. Yeah. So if a teenager comes across anything on any social media, and they think, oh, I wonder if that's true. What do they do? And the other one is around content that they find kind of boring and they're not interested in, actually, that they can tell the algorithm

that they're not interested in. I always say that to my teenagers. Like, if you're not interested, because people change their interests. One of the tools we launched on Instagram last year was a reset button, which is that, you know, you might have been really interested in horse riding or something. Yeah, when you're 13 and 14 and now you're totally not interested and you don't do it anymore. But, you know, the algorithm, the recommendations are still giving you that kind of content and you wanna change it. And so you can reset so that it basically resets

kind of from the start, which might be a bit frustrating for some people, but for others they might find real value in it. That on Reels and Explore and on your feed, you're not gonna, it's a digital reset, it's kind of like a refresh. And again, we launched that last year. I think, again, it's just one of the other tools, many tools, that we try to help people who want to like personalise the experience. I think that's something that people do really appreciate. I think that's great because there's a level of self monitoring as well as sort of parental supervision as well for the teenagers then, isn't it? Yes, exactly. And what would be your last piece of advice for parents of teens navigating social media?

I'd probably say like, you know, we are all in it together. It is, you know, please don't ever feel that it's, you know, you're overwhelmed and everyone else is doing this brilliantly. I think we all feel it. I think it's not just on social media. I would say more broadly, like the phone, it's the phone that we talk about at home. Like put the phone down. Where is your phone? They're the conversations that we have.

So I think, you know, do, you're not alone, is probably the first thing I'd say. The second thing is we really have tried to build this Tina Kants experience or Tina Kants tool with you at the heart of it, with parents at the absolute heart of it. We've listened to parents, we've built it for parents and we really do think teenagers are appreciating it. The fact that we have now 54 million teens moved into the teen account experience I think is testament to that. And the fact that so many teens, like 97% of teens,

are not changing any of those more protective experiences to less protective I think is testament to that as well. And I'd say the work is never done. I really might sound trite, but we are, as soon as we build something and we send it out and we look at the are, as soon as we build something and we send it out and we, you know, look at the data, as I said, more data will be coming because it's still in the global rollout phase. We're constantly trying to make it better. We're constantly trying to improve on it.

So I think your listeners will probably see more and more coming to teen accounts over the next year or so. Thank you so much, Tara. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise and all those valuable parenting tips as well. I know I've made a note of a few myself as I approach tweendom, teendom with my eldest. I think it's really important as you're, you know, like the tween age, it's like when you do, I feel the pressure really starts to mount. It did for me when my daughter was kind of 10 and 11.

And so, you know, while we really hope they are not on Instagram, they should be 13 and above. I do think for parents who are out there who have younger, like older children and younger tweens, just start to have those conversations and make it really a normal part of, you know, kind of daily family life. So there's not something scary because I think it is, I think we all do feel, I certainly felt a pressure when my daughter was that bit younger to get her the phone and then on social media. And I do feel like you can just say no as well.

It moves fast. It moves fast, doesn't it? Because one minute they've got the phone, next they're asking for something else and someone else has gone to the app and they want this and they want that. And you're living a busy life and you've just got home from work

and you're putting the tea on it's a tea on the table. And it's quite hard to just quite often, I'm sort of the boring mom where I'm a bit like, can we slow down? Can we pause this chat? And can we pick it up again at the weekend? Because I've got to think about this and I can't think about it

whilst getting the washing machine and I'm sticking something in the air fryer and someone else wants their packed lunch box washing for tomorrow. They're cheap negotiators, aren't they? They're just negotiating with you constantly. And I think in some ways it's brilliant because that's like a life skill, isn't it? But it's exhausting.

Yeah. And they do come at you at your weakest times. Like I say, at the end of a long day, when you're juggling at spinning plates, it's like, can I just have this hoping you'll just go, oh, fine. Yes, whatever. Which, you know, which I do do some of that as well. But yeah, sort of learning to go, hang on, let's just put the brakes on here. This is a serious discussion. I've got to get this through. Because as I say to my tweet, once I say yes, that's it then for the rest of your life. And, and you're only

12. So actually, if I can just slow this conversation down, just a little bit longer. And, and do this properly and think about this properly. And yeah, but you know, they're impatient and they want stuff. They want shiny stuff the whole time. They do, they do. Yeah, it's completely normal, but yeah, stand your ground, it's hard. I think it's not an easy space to be in,

but I hope people do know that, you know, there is a lot going on in the background to keep your teenagers, when they do join social media, they do join Instagram as safe as they possibly can be. And we hope that that gives parents a level of reassurance. Like I said, it will never be perfect. Like, you know, that's unfortunate how life goes. Yeah, I do know of various teenagers who have multiple Instagram accounts as well, which is a hard one to tackle for you guys as well.

It is, but I won't give away the secrets of how we do it, but we do behind the scenes, we do do a lot of work to look for anyone, in fact, who's got multiple accounts. Not that it's not okay to have multiple accounts, we find a lot of people have for lots of different reasons, but we want to make sure that any teen under the age of 18 who has an account on Instagram is in the teen account experience and so we really do endeavor to to make sure that we're doing that.

Brilliant, thank you so much. And I'm sure your tips and advice will be so useful to the parents in our community, whether they're on the beginning of their journey, navigating social media or in the thick of it. Well, thank you for having me. Tara, thank you so much for joining us and sharing both your expertise and your personal

experiences. You have some really valuable advice which will help our parenting community. I know I've learnt some brilliant tips today which I'm intending to put into place, such as exploring Family Control Centre and staying curious about my children's online world. If you want to learn more or try out these safety features head to Instagram.com forward slash teen accounts. We'll also have a handy article on netmums.com with all the information we talked about today and don't forget you can get in touch with us on social channels at netmums and if you've liked what you've heard we love you to give us a five-star rating. Press the follow

button and share the podcasts and all your socials, especially your parent WhatsApp group. Be sure to subscribe to the Netmums podcast wherever you get your podcasts and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter at netmums. Thanks for listening and see you next time.