Instagram's parent company Meta has started rolling out "teen accounts" across the Asia-Pacific region, including Taiwan. Profiles of all users aged 16 years or younger will be automatically set to private and restricted from seeing sensitive content. Parents and guardians will have the power to adjust the settings of their children's accounts.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Who's following you on Instagram?
00:03Set to public, your profile can be seen by anyone who comes across it, be they friends
00:08or fakers.
00:09If that's a concern, you can choose to change the privacy settings on your account.
00:14But beginning this week in Taiwan and elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific, Instagram accounts of
00:18users 16 years or younger will be forcibly set to private.
00:24It's part of Instagram parent company Meta's rollout of teen accounts across several regions,
00:30beginning in countries like Australia, the UK and US last September, with new features
00:35designed to make the social media experience safer for minors.
00:40Some of those features include allowing parents to restrict their children from viewing sensitive
00:45content, using the app for too long, and sending messages to strangers.
00:54While a welcome change for some, others argue that teen accounts are missing the point.
01:10Yang Zhiying, from the Taiwan Youth Association for Democracy, thinks that simply restricting
01:16young people's use of social networks will deprive them of important social spaces online
01:22and restrict their ability to express themselves.
01:35And others have stressed the importance of teaching internet literacy in a world where
01:40young people will inevitably be online much of the time.
01:53As young people across the Asia-Pacific begin logging in to their newly restricted Instagram
02:02accounts, for now, it will be up to their parents or guardians to decide how much access
02:07to hand back to them, as families, governments and big tech continue to debate who should
02:13be responsible for protecting children online.
02:16Howard Zhang, and Rhys Ayres, for Taiwan Plus.