Are Instagram accounts for teenagers really the solution?

We complain every day about the effect social media has on us. On our idea of beauty, on how we experience intimacy, on our attention span, which is now worn and frayed. As adults (more or less), we worry about the impact it can have, especially on younger people, on pre-teens who become obsessed with skincare at just 14, on lonely thirteen-year-olds who have forgotten how to socialize, on vulnerable teenagers who find solace in incel and misogynistic communities, and who end up caught in the vortex of political extremism, and much more.

Meta launches Teen Accounts

There has been talk of asking for government support, or of completely banning social media for those under 14, 15, or 16 years old. Now, private platforms themselves, starting with Meta, are taking matters into their own hands (or at least trying). Instagram recently announced the upcoming introduction of a "Teen Account" system equipped with automatic protections and strict rules about what content they can see and who can contact them. These accounts will be automatically assigned to users under 16 when they sign up. Existing accounts for minors will be converted within the next 60 days. The only way to change these restrictions will be to have parental or guardian authorization. For now, however, this change only affects the U.S., UK, Canada, and Australia.

Is this the right solution? More or less

This news has been welcomed by many, especially adults. It's not necessarily a bad thing, actually. The issues it seeks to address, in fact, do exist. We've noted this on various occasions: social media eliminates the natural distance between adults and minors, it disregards the sensitivity of certain topics, and it doesn't separate or tailor content based on age. When and where, in real life, do we have conversations in front of high school students? When we do, are we careful about what we say? I hope so. But on platforms, this kind of control slips through our fingers, becoming a tool for those acting in bad faith, those looking for followers, and those who use the vulnerabilities of adolescence to their advantage, in every sense. But the problem is much bigger and more nuanced than that.

Media literacy, social media education and all the rest

Taking a wider view, we could talk about how, in some cases, social media has become the only way for people to socialize, how spaces for children are increasingly rare, how mothers (and therefore their children) are not protected, and how difficult it is to integrate young people (all of them, regardless of their economic status, where they were born, etc.) into an individualistic, closed, expensive society made for the privileged. We could also mention how the mental health of teenagers is an increasingly pressing and ignored issue, and the role social media plays in this. One might think, as usual, that the solution to such a social problem should not come from the private sector, but from the public domain, through education and support. On top of all the issues mentioned, it's worth repeating that many people, whether minors or fully grown adults, have no education on how to use social media, nor do they possess basic media literacy. They don't understand what's dangerous and what isn't, which content is meant for them and which isn't. They don't know how to protect themselves, and it's up to us (as a society, as a community) to teach them to do so, to defend themselves. With or without Meta.