Meta is restricting the content teenagers can see globally

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Instagram has announced a global change in what teens can see on the platform less than two months before Australia’s social media ban for under 16s is due to begin.

Transcript

00:00Good morning, Gemma. Well, Meta, the parent company for Instagram, is cracking down on content for teens.

00:10What it means now is that any teens who are on the teen-only accounts for Instagram

00:15will only be able to see content deemed to be within the PG-13 plus rating, as if you were going to see a movie.

00:22The kinds of things that you would see there is now what teens will be able to see on social media.

00:27It means that anyone under the age of 18 who has this type of account from today

00:32will automatically be placed within these stricter content guidelines as well,

00:37and the only way they can opt out of it is with parental permission.

00:41But for parents who believe that this perhaps doesn't go far enough,

00:45they have the option to opt in to even stricter guidelines too.

00:50I know many parents across the nation right now are probably thinking to themselves,

00:54My 14-year-old is a tech whiz. It'll take them all of five seconds to find a go-around for this

00:59before they're back to accessing the same content.

01:02But Meta says they've thought about this and they are going to implement age prediction technology.

01:08So even if a teen says or claims that they are 18 years old, they will still fall within these stricter content guidelines.

01:16So what this means and the kinds of things that teenagers will see on their social media,

01:22they could still see some strong language occasionally as well as some suggestive content.

01:28But what they won't be able to do anymore is follow or interact, see posts or comments from users or creators

01:36who frequently post age-inappropriate content.

01:41Meta has already cracked down on search options too.

01:44Previously, teenagers couldn't search things like suicide, self-harm or eating disorders.

01:49They're now going to take that a step further.

01:52Teenagers won't be able to search things like alcohol or gore or any misspellings of the such.

01:59Meta says that this content, this harder content is going to come into effect from today

02:07for countries including Australia.

02:09But with the December 10 deadline looming for the under-16s,

02:13social media cracked down in less than two months now.

02:16Whether it'll have much of an impact on our under-16s is yet to be seen.

02:20Gemma?

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