Following Ofcom’s publication of the draft Children's Safety Codes of Practice which are due to come into effect in early 2025, Instagram has changed the way it works for teenagers, promising more “built-in protections” for young people and added controls for parents. 

The new “teen accounts” will turn many privacy settings on by default for all under 18s, including making their content unviewable to people who do not follow them, and making them actively approve all new followers. Children aged 13 to 15 will only be able to adjust the settings by adding a parent or guardian to their account. Furthermore, there will be strict controls on sensitive content to prevent recommendations of potentially harmful material and muted notifications overnight. 

Parents who choose to supervise their child's account will be able to see who they message and the topics they have said they are interested in, though they will not be able to view the content of messages. However, media regulator Ofcom raised concerns in April over parents' willingness to intervene to keep their children safe online and senior Meta executive, Sir Nick Clegg, recently said: “One of the things we do find… is that even when we build these controls, parents don’t use them.”

Social media companies are under pressure worldwide to make their platforms safer, with concerns that not enough is being done to protect young people from harmful content. 

The NSPCC said Instagram’s announcement was a "step in the right direction” but added that account settings can “put the emphasis on children and parents needing to keep themselves safe."  Rani Govender, the NSPCC’s online child safety policy manager, said they "must be backed up by proactive measures that prevent harmful content and sexual abuse from proliferating Instagram in the first place”.

Social media is just one means by which online abuse can and sadly does occur. Organisations which work with children should make sure that they have in place clear policies and procedures for how they engage with children via social media, and have appropriate controls so that children do not, for example, access social media via an organisations unprotected Wi-Fi.