Instagram is introducing new parental supervision tools for the accounts of teenagers in the UK, which will allow parents to oversee their profile, set daily use limits and see who they follow and who follows them. First launched in the US in March, the tools are now being expanded to the UK and Ireland for the first time.
With the new features, parents will be able to send an invitation to their teenager to initiate the supervision of their account, and once this has been accepted the parent will be able to set daily limits for how long their child can spend on the app and schedule breaks for specific times. The tools also enable parents to see who their child follows and is followed by, and get information when the teenager reports an account or post on the platform.
Youngsters can also invite a parent to supervise their account. In addition, parents will be able to view a dashboard showing their child’s daily habits on the platform.
The parental supervision features automatically end when the child turns 18, Instagram confirmed. The rollout will coincide with a new “nudges” feature being tested in the UK and Ireland, which will see a notification that encourages them to switch to a different topic on the platform if they are repeatedly looking at the same type of content on the app’s Explore tab.
Instagram said it designed this feature because research has suggested “nudges can be effective for helping people – especially teens – be more mindful of how they’re using social media in the moment”.