Instagram will now let parents control how kids use platform

Social media platform Instagram, today, introduced controls for parents of underage users started in India. Called Parental Supervision, the suite of settings offers controls that parents can tweak in order to see the kind of internet experiences that their kids are exposed to. The features were announced globally in December last year, and rolled out to users in the US in March.

The move comes just over a year after the platform started restricting the amount of data that advertisers could collect and use to serve targeted content to users under 16 years of age.

The platform’s move comes at a time when legislators around the world, including India, have been flagging issues around underage usage of social media platforms, and how children’s data could be misused for targeted advertising and other related purposes. India’s draft Personal Data Protection bill, which has now been withdrawn, also required social media firms to seek parental approval before allowing children under the age of 18 before allowing them to use the platforms.

The move was widely contested by platforms, who felt that it was too strict and would lead to more data collection. 

At the moment, any regulation to stop underage use of social media remains scarce in India, said, said Pawan Duggal, cyber security expert and lawyer at the Supreme Court. 

“We have the Section 67B of the Information Technology Act, 2000, which deals with strictures on child pornography. There is also Section 6 of the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules, 2011, which covers any sharing of sensitive personal data by corporate bodies, with third parties. None, however, strictly cover the impact of data sharing and internet services on children,” Duggal said.

In July last year, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, a statutory body under the Ministry of Women and Child Development, said in a survey that despite mandating users to be at least 13 years of age, Meta’s social platforms — Facebook and Instagram — had a significant number of users aged around 10.

The report showed that nearly one in every four 10-year-old internet users in the country had an Instagram account, and called for moves to regulate access to social media services for such underage users.

India’s upcoming Digital India Act, which is in the works right now, is expected to introduce regulations in this regard. On September 5, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that the Digital India Act would make the “online world more accountable for what is published there”.

To be sure, the Parental Controls feature does not exactly seek approval from parents either. The feature allows parents to control how much time their kids can spend on Instagram every day, and also mandate break periods between each day and week. Parents will also be able to see whom their kids follow, and who follow them back. Further, they will be notified when their kids report an account.

Avinash Chandra, a public policy expert and former senior fellow at policy think-tank, Centre for Civil Society, said that one of the biggest issues that underage users face is linked to body image, which in turn causes numerous mental health troubles early on. “While the new parental controls can help address this to an extent, it is also important to note that many underage users have multiple accounts, and instances of cyber-bullying may be tricky to handle for platforms even with such controls,” he said.

Instagram isn’t the only platform making such changes either. In February last year, Google-owned YouTube announced a 'Supervised Mode' — which allowed parents to give underage users access to the video streaming service through their own Google account. Snapchat, too, introduced 'Family Center', which gave parents the ability to see which accounts their children follow, and report any that they find objectionable, in August this year.