Meta expands Instagram parental controls for teens and brings them to Facebook, Messenger

Under-16s will be unable to use Instagram’s live-streaming feature without parental permission, part of an update to the site’s parental controls.

Meta said Instagram users under the age of 16 would need parental permission to turn off a feature which automatically blurs images suspected to contain nudity within direct messages.

The updates are an expansion of the social media giant’s Teen Accounts system, which it introduced last September, and places any users under 16 into a Teen Account by default, which automatically makes an account private, reduces messaging capabilities and puts the user into the strictest category of Meta’s sensitive content settings.

The tech giant said it was also beginning to roll out Teen Accounts to both Facebook and Facebook Messenger.

Since September, it said around 54 million teens globally had been moved onto Teen Accounts, and that this figure would continue to grow as it expanded the availability of the settings.

“These are major updates that have fundamentally changed the experience for teens on Instagram,” Meta said in a blog post.