Instagram will soon alert parents if their teen repeatedly searches for content related to suicide and self-harm on the platform. According to an announcement from Meta, these notifications will be available to parents in the U.S., UK, Australia, and Canada who supervise their teen’s accounts starting next week.
As TechCrunch reports, this feature is being rolled out amid numerous lawsuits over how Meta and other tech companies have failed to protect kids and teens across their platforms.
How the new safety alerts work
Instagram will use teens’ search activity to generate alerts. Searches that are flagged include “phrases promoting suicide or self-harm, phrases that suggest a teen wants to harm themselves, and terms like ‘suicide’ or ‘self-harm,'” according to Meta.
Parents will receive alerts via email, text, or WhatsApp as well as an in-app notification. The message lets parents know that their teen has “repeatedly searched” for content related to suicide or self-harm and includes resources for supporting teens.
Instagram already blocks searches associated with suicide and self-harm, directing users to resources instead. While users can post about their personal experiences, Meta’s policies do not allow content that promotes or glorifies these topics, and Instagram hides related content from teens (even if it’s from someone they follow).
What do you think so far?
Enable parental supervision on Instagram
To receive alerts, parental supervision must be enabled on your teen’s account. Supervision allows parents to set app time limits, enable sleep mode, and monitor and manage things like account settings, followers, accounts followed, content topics searched, and app usage. Parental supervision is available for teens ages 13–17, and teens have to agree to participate.
To send a supervision invite to your teen, open the More menu in the bottom-left and click Settings. Select Supervision > Create Invite, review the information, and hit Continue. From here, you can copy the invite to send via any messaging app. Note that teens can decline supervision requests—the feature is opt-in for both parties.
