Many young people enjoy using Instagram. Although you can find fun and entertaining content, the app is also a place where frauds, sexual content, cyberbullying, and abuse are common. This article is for parents who would like to protect their children from harmful content that is unhealthy for their minds. At the end, you will know how to set up Instagram’s Parental Controls while monitoring your child’s activity on the app.
First off, Instagram does not allow access to an account that belongs to another user. This is due to privacy and regulatory policies. And so, for this to work you’ll need to work with your child who should be at least a teenager before he or she can have an Instagram account.
Secondly, an Instagram user under the age of 13 must explicitly indicate in their profile description that their account is being supervised by a parent or manager. Underage users can be reported by a parent or manager to Instagram in order to have their accounts deactivated. If your child is under 13, you can do this by submitting a report to Instagram.
How to secure your child’s privacy on Instagram
#1: Make sure your teen’s account is set to “private” so that only those who have been following them can view their updates. All new followers of a private profile must first be approved. There is no way for non-followers to see your child’s posts even if they include location tags or hashtags.
#2: Unfollow accounts you don’t know. Whatever your teen posts on Instagram will no longer appear on their feed. As long as your child’s profile is set to “private”, unknown users, who try to re-follow will be rejected.
#3: Non-followers can still see your teen’s username, photo, bio, and website even though the account is private. And so to prevent this, don’t put any personal information in the Bio description of the profile. Such information includes house address, mobile number, school location, etc.
#4: Filter out bad comments so they don’t show up on posts. A general “Hide Offensive Comments” setting or a Manual Filter setting can be found in your teen’s comment settings (Profile > Menu > Settings > Privacy > Comments). You can choose to hide all offensive comments, or you can type in words you don’t want to see. A person who tries to post a comment that has been caught by these filters will have it taken down.
#5: You can prevent some users from adding comments to your teen’s post. In the comments settings, tap Block Comments From and then search for specific accounts you want to add to this “blacklist”. Once these persons have been added they won’t be able to write comments to your teen’s post and will only be seen by your teen and not by anyone else.
#6: You can stop specific accounts from seeing your child’s “Stories” posts. This tip will come in handy if your teen posts stories that aren’t acceptable or applicable to a specific group of followers.
#7: Sharing stories with Close Friends is a great option as it makes your teen’s post visible to a selected group of people. It works just the way of hiding “Stories” from selected Instagram followers.
#8: You can also prevent selected accounts from interacting with your teen. To restrict access, click on the three dots at the top right corner of the screen and select Restrict. No one, apart from your teen and the restricted user, can view any comments made by this person, unless it’s approved by Instagram. Even DMs will be displayed as message requests, which your child can either approve or decline.
#9: Use the “Block” feature to prevent accounts from following your teen on Instagram. First identify the particular account, tap the three dots at the top right and select “Block”. This will hide your child’s account from this user. He or she cannot view posts, stories nor send a direct message to your teens account.
#10: Discuss the dangers of Internet scams with your teen and how he or she can stay safe online. Your child also needs to know how to report any account that seems suspicious. To report an account, tap the three dots at the top right corner of the user’s profile (or direct message chat), then select Report.
Which of these tips did you find helpful, and are willing to test?
