To make the social media platform a friendlier yet safer place for kids, Instagram decided to make some security changes to the app.
To identify “suspicious behavior”, Instagram is running software updates in Australia, Japan, France, the US and the UK. This update in the software will catch any adult trying to illegally contact underage children through the platform.
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“Wherever we can, we want to prevent young people from hearing from adults they don’t know or from whom they don’t want to hear,” says a blog post on Instagram.
It did so after Facebook’s own platform decided to launch a similar app just for kids.
In the new security features, all accounts created for underage children are now set to “private” mode by default instead of the option to make it public or private. This will help limit the audience of underage children.
Minors who already have public accounts will receive notifications and instructions to inform them that their account is being made private and the importance of keeping a limited audience.
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“Encouraging young people to have personal accounts is a big step in the right direction when it comes to preventing unwanted adult contact,” said Instagram. “But we’re going even further to make young people’s accounts difficult to find for certain adults.”
Additionally, Instagram will keep an eye out for any suspicious accounts, especially those that have been banned or reported by children. “By ‘potentially suspicious behavior’ we mean adult accounts that have recently been banned or reported by a young person, for example,” said Instagram.
All adult accounts that have been blocked or reported even once for such reasons are not allowed to follow adolescents and cannot view the contents of adolescent accounts.
