Instagram is going PG-13. Will that make a difference for teens?

Depending on who you are, Instagram might now seem a bit more PG-13. That’s by design.

Meta has rolled out a suite of new content moderation tools on Instagram aimed at addressing concerns that young people are seeing “unsafe content” on the social media platform. Users under the age of 18 will now by default only see content that matches what one would see in a PG-13 movie, based on the Motion Picture Association’s definition.

The rollout of these new tools, which Meta calls the “most significant update to Teen Accounts” since they were introduced in 2024, comes amid renewed concerns that the company’s platforms remain unsafe for young users. This, after social media CEOs, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, have been put in the congressional hot seat over the risks their platforms pose to teens.

The question remains: Will making Instagram PG-13 for teen users really protect them?

Ursula Smartt, an associate professor of law at Northeastern University’s London campus, isn’t so sure.

“The changes apply only to teen-specific accounts, which are accounts that teens have created using their truthful birth dates or accounts that Instagram has determined,” Smartt says. “Yet, it is common for teens to lie about their ages online to avoid certain restrictions.”

Age verification laws are already being introduced in a number of countries to avoid this problem. However, the number of people using virtual private networks, or VPNs, has surged in response, Smartt explains.

“Most teenagers know and use VPNs already, which mask their internet traffic and spoof their location,” allowing them to get around age verification laws in a given country, Smartt says.

Given how resourceful teens are in evading rules regardless of whether they’re in the virtual or real world, Instagram’s new rules could actually put more pressure—and responsibility—back on parents.

Anything that minimizes the amount of unsafe content teens don’t want to see on social media is a move in the right direction, according to Rachel Rodgers, an associate professor of psychology at Northeastern who studies the impact of social media on young people. However, these new tools are much more effective as a jumping-off point for educating children about how to engage with social media.

“The more children are having conversations with their parents about what they’re doing on social media and why and how and what this means, the better the outcomes,” Rodgers says.

That’s admittedly a big ask. Most parents barely have enough time to watch along during their children’s screen time, she says, let alone every time their teen hops on Instagram. But the sooner parents can start talking about how to use social media with their children, the better. Those conversations help young people develop critical skills, like how to detect intent behind what people are saying and posting on social media. That’s integral for learning how to then interact with and respond to people online in a healthy way, Rodgers says.

There are options for making the platform even more restrictive, and Rodgers admits it can be tempting for parents to just turn on these settings and let Meta’s designers do their job. It’s much better for parents to approach these new tools collaboratively and make it a conversation.

“That’s when you’re explaining to teens why some content would be restricted,” Rodgers says. “Why would you want them to see it? Why might you not want them to see it?”

Those conversations might reveal something surprising: Parents and their children are more aligned than either might think when it comes to content on social media.

“[Teens are] generally not trying to go view things that we would consider really outside of their age,” Rodgers says. “They’re quite happy to not be pushed too much on that. They find it uncomfortable.”

This story is republished courtesy of Northeastern Global News news.northeastern.edu.