Instagram Will Stop Adults From Messaging Teens Who Don’t Follow Them

Here’s everything you need to know.

Big changes have come out of Instagram this week with the social media platform announcing a string of new policies to keep young people safe online.

These changes include banning adults from sending a direct message to people under the age of 18; notifying teens to be more cautious in convos with adults; making it harder for adults to find and follow teens; and encouraging teens to make their accounts private.

Basically, this is all about stopping creepy adults from sliding into your DMs.

Let’s take a look at these changes and breakdown why they’re good for you.

Banning DMs between teens and adults.

Let's jump straight into the biggest change from Insta's announcement.

Preventing messages between people under the age of 18 and adults they don’t follow is now a new feature (finally).

The move is part of an effort to protect teens from unwanted contact from adults. From an in-app perspective, when an adult tries to message a teen who doesn’t follow them, they will get a notification saying that messaging them isn’t an option.

Part of this new feature relies on Instagram’s technology that predicts people’s age.

Of course, not everyone puts in their actual age when they sign up for apps. Who knew, right?

While Insta reckons they're on top of this, they're developing new artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to protect teens’ privacy.

Dayum, that’s some futuristic stuff right there.

Notifying teens to be cautious in convos.

Instagram won’t just stop conversations between teens and adults who don’t follow one another, but will also start using prompts to encourage teens to be cautious with adults they're connected to.

This means that a teen will receive a safety notice in their DMs when an adult who has been up to some suss behaviour is interacting with them.

For example, if an adult creeper is sending a stupid amount of friend or message requests to young people under 18, Instagram will alert the teen in their DMs and give them the option to end the convo, block, report, or restrict that adult.

Making it harder for adults to find and follow teens.

Though Instagram haven’t made any concrete plans here, they have confirmed they are exploring ways to make it more difficult for adults behaving questionably to interact with teens.

They have flagged that this may include preventing adults from seeing teen accounts in ‘Suggested Users’, stopping them from viewing teen content in Explore and Reels, and automatically hiding their comments on public posts by young people.

Encouraging teens to go private.

Additionally, Instagram are doing a renewed push to encourage young people to make their accounts private.

Private accounts allow better control over who can see and interact with your content, so this makes perfect sense.

Additionally, there will now be a new step when someone under 18 signs up for an account that allows them to choose between a public or private profile.

The Student Edge take.

Anything to keep basement dwelling creepers out of your inbox is a win for everyone.

Real talk though: something like this has been needed on social media for a long time, so we're big fans of what Instagram are doing in this space.

Header Image: Instagram