I Don’t Believe Kids Should Be on Social Media, So I Interviewed Meta Anyway

Welcome back to another episode of After Bedtime. I can say that I have been looking

“forward to this episode for quite a few weeks, maybe even quite a few months. I besties, as you”

know, have a nine year old. We are navigating the world of Mom, I want a phone. This friend has a phone, social media, what are you doing, TikTok, Roblox, Instagram, Snapchat, we're not there yet,

but it's certainly something that is always on my mind. And what we are noticing is it's always

on your mind too, whether you have a teen, whether you have a preteen, whether you have a toddler, we are all in an age where we're thinking about social media and how to go about this new technology, sort of childhood preteen world that we just didn't grow up in. So today, I'm sitting down with an incredible woman, Tara Hopkins, from Mehta, and I can't wait for you to hear our conversation. It's going to make you feel a lot better, I promise, and it's going to make you feel more informed.

That way we're not just sitting here spiraling. I don't know, like I was last night. Here we go. Welcome to After Bedtime, where the house is finally quiet, but the real noise begins. The thoughts,

the questions, the wondering if you're doing any of this right. We're Kristen and Dina,

child behavior experts, moms and co-founders of big little feelings, and we're not here to give you more pressure or perfect parenting energy. Nope, we're here to tell the truth. The unfiltered, beautiful, brutal truth about what it means to raise kids and re-raise ourselves in the process. Because parenting isn't just about sleep schedules and snack hacks, it's about healing. It's about breaking cycles. It's about becoming the kind of adult you want your kids to grow up to be.

This is the place where we say the quiet parts out loud, and we're so glad that you're here. Alright Besties, I am sitting here with Tara Hopkins, Tara is a global director of public policy at Instagram/meta, where she works on youth well-being, the creator economy, and broader regulatory issues for the company. She's also a mom of two teenagers, so she has personal experience

“in this world, which I think is just such a gift to all of us listening that she can really”

understand what is happening behind the scenes at Instagram, as well as what's happening behind the scenes in the home of a mom with teens. Tara joined Instagram in 2019. She was the head of policy for Europe, Middle Eastern Africa, then she moved into a global role in September 2022. Here she is, Tara Hopkins, welcome to After Bedtime. Thank you for having me. Thank you for coming. I mean, this is such a big topic in our world, our us as moms. What is your biggest topic

in your house right now as a mom of two teens? Is it technology? It is technology, and it's also trying to balance my daughter's life. She's 16, so she's really moving fast into that next space as a teenager, and then my son who's just moved from being 12 to 13, and so there's two things. I'm struggling with the fact that I don't have little children anymore because I love having little children. I'm struggling with that, but I certainly the conversations that we have

around technology are that actually they are experiencing it in two quite different ways, boys and girls, a 16 year old, and a 13 year old, you know, I feel quite comfortable and confident in my daughter's ability to kind of regulate herself. She's quite mature. My son, he loves the gaming. He loves YouTube shorts. He's not that bothered about Instagram. He's not really the core audience. And I can't really have these conversations. Both about what's okay for one to have,

might not be okay for the other one to have, and the amount of time is different from my daughter to my son. So I live and breathe this at home as well as at Instagram. Before we get into the specifics about because I want to hear about Instagram teen, especially as somebody who hasn't really delved into the world at all yet, but I do know sort of as a professional, but I do just want to ask as a mom, what are the conversations around technology in general

that you are saying you have with your children? Let's say as they're tiptoeing in,

“as your third, third year old is tiptoeing. What kind of conversations are you having?”

We have many conversations. I think the first one, and you touched on this a little bit when you were

doing the introduction, which was quite early on your teenager or younger even, will start to ask you about having the phone. And that can be really quite young that can be 9 and 10 because maybe your teenager is or your 9 or 10 year old is, you know, going off to other sports things after school or other after school clubs, dance and things like that. So I think it's really

as a mom starts way younger. I really felt it as my daughter hit the 9, 10 age. And yes,

some other children in her class had phones. And we actually had very near the schools or didn't feel a need for a phone, but there was definitely a lot of conversations among the mom group at the school gates and at drop-off. Do you have a phone? Mine doesn't have a phone. You feel

“pressure as a parent. You know, should they give them a phone or not give them the phone?”

And that's even before you start thinking about social media and the apps that are on the phone. You know, so I think that's definitely a conversation that I started having with my children a long time ago, but I still haven't now with my son because some of his friends will have certain games that I don't feel comfortable with him having. And, you know, and it's awkward. Honestly, it can be an awkward conversation that you have with the other parents because they'll say,

"Hey, I let my son or my daughter play this game. I'm not going to mention any names." And do you, and I say, "Oh, no." But that's okay if you do because you know, you really don't want to judge other moms. So, I think we as parents and we as moms feel a lot of pressure

way before they become teenagers. I think that's the first thing to say. And then the other

conversations I have with my teens are just, you know, I made some mistakes with my daughter and maybe allowed her to see things that I wouldn't necessarily want my son to see. And I just don't think he's mature enough or something like that. And I have to say to my son, you know what, I don't think you're ready for certain things yet. And he will say, "But Anna, who's my daughter, had this?" When she was 14 and I say, "Yeah, you know what she did?" But you're different and I'm

going to take a slightly different approach with you. And that can lead to a lot of tension in the house, frankly. And so, like we do, I think it is, I think we should as parents and as moms a little bit give ourselves some breathing space. It's hard. You know, when you have toddlers, it's difficult,

you're exhausted to tired. When you have nine and ten year olds, it's different because they're

at school and they're making friends and they fall out and all of those types of things. And then you hit the teenagers and it's a different set of conversations that you're having with them. And and I think that we just have to kind of give each other a little bit of slack if they're not a pressure on each other. And also just feel confident as a parent, like trust your gut as a parent, that your teenagers, you might have one or two or three in the family and they'll all experience

life in very different ways. And that's okay. You don't have to have the same rules for every

“single person that lives under your roof. And I think you should just feel a level of confidence in”

that as well as a parent. And when you are sort of setting those boundaries in those guard rails, let's say the video game one or the game one, I should say is a great one. Particularly even when it comes to Instagram, let's say there are families out there and their friend has Instagram, you have decided that's not what you want to do, Tina count or not, which again, we'll get into Tina counts. You are saying even within your own home that this is really up to the parents.

And this is a tricky thing to navigate. That some parents may say yes to Instagram, you too, any of the various games that are out there and some may not. And this is just a really uncomfortable, you know, tricky topic that you need to feel confident in. This is not sort of like, all right, well Sarah has it, so we're just going to have to do that. Yeah, and I think as a parent is recognizing that there's pressure that you feel from other parents and this pressure that you

feel from your teenagers and this pressure from the things you're reading and the media and you know, you might have had a really positive experience in there for you thinking, hey, I had a really positive experience. This certain thing really makes me laugh and it's humor and or I've built a community through a certain social media app or my husband would say to me,

“he thinks that gaming and I think he's right, that certain gaming is great and it's strategy and”

you know, it can be, it can be brilliant for the mind. And so you just have to think to yourself, give yourself some time, take a step back and honestly also look for, look for the resources that are right there. And we'll talk a bit about that about the Mattia Family Center, but there are so many resources out there for parents and I think you can feel a bit bamboozled about it and you don't know where to go. There are lots and lots and lots of different pieces of brilliant

expert advice out there to help you to navigate this, to help you to have those conversations, to guide those conversations with your preteen and then your teenager and then they, as my daughter is now aging up from kind of that 15, 16 age. So yeah, family center on Mattia.com Family Center absolutely loads of brilliant expert driven resources, but there's lots out there, you know, Google at use AI and try to give yourself even if it is 15 minutes on a

bit of research and do a bit of reading and just it really does help you to build a bit of confidence that you can have those conversations with your teenagers and have those conversations with other parents about it and feel confident in the decisions that you make. And so let's talk a little bit about Instagram teen because I've seen it lightly, I honestly saw it on Instagram the irony. It is where I thought about Instagram teen and talked to me a little bit about what the concept

of Instagram teen is just for anyone who doesn't know what it is. So I'll take a bit of a step back

because at Instagram, first of all teenagers are really important to the lifeblood of Instagram.

They are wonderful and they are where trends happen. We were all once teenagers and we were all once kind of or at least we thought we were kind of cool and Instagram is a place where teenagers come

“and they engage and they build community and they do amazing things. That's the best thing I'd say.”

As do adults who use Instagram but we have long viewed the safety of the teens who are using up platformers are a number one priority and that's a long time. That's that's decades and we've been investing really heavily in in building technology and providing tools for teens who are using up platform and parents who are using up platform. But in full honesty we were finding that either parents didn't know they didn't understand it. A lot of these tools that we were building

were defaulted on so that meant they wanted teen for us to join Instagram and they were kind of put into these settings. But we were allowing for us in teens to change some of those settings if they wanted to and have a bit of autonomy and that was based on expert feedback that we'd been given. What we've done in the last three or more years is we went out and had very deep conversations

“of parents to really try to understand where their concerns lay and there were three things”

their parents came back to us to tell us that they were concerned about it and this is in the U.S. This is in the UK on based out of London across the globe so the three things were who can contact my teenager when they're on Instagram and is that someone that my teenager knows or is there a possibility that my teen could be communicating with someone who they don't know. So then as a parent that is your worst nightmare you don't want to think that someone who's

particularly an adult could communicate with your teen without you knowing. So that was the first one.

The second one was about the content so is my teenager seeing what we in the industry just got described as age-appropriate content so in simple terms is is the content that they're seeing okay and is it right for my 14-year-old or my 15-year-old and then the third thing the parents came back with was time so and this wasn't so much about social media or one app it was more like what is the right amount of time for my teenage to spend on their phone? Is it an hour? Is it three

“hours? Is it a 20 minutes you know and I think when your children are little at least here in the”

UK I think for when the the US is the same you know you go to your local doctor your pediatric doctor and they help you navigate a lot of those very early years whereas when your teenage has become teenagers there's no one we need to go to and say hold on how much time should I give them on their phone should it be 20 minutes? I don't know you know I don't know where to go to and who to talk with is. So they were the three things that we heard and while we had built over 50 tools

over the last 10 years to to address a lot of these issues what we did was we just decided to make it even easier for parents and the other thing the parents told us was they felt a sense of a burden they felt that all these different tools you know should they go in should they be turning them on to be turning off should they be using parental supervision they had so many questions about it so what we did was we built Instagram teen accounts and Instagram teen accounts is we have

defaulted every teen under the age of 18 so if we know your teen age or is under the age of 18 you can talk about age and how we understand age but just to your listeners to know then if your teen age or is under the age of 18 they have been defaulted so they have been automatically placed into an Instagram teen account and that happens whether they wanted or not we send them a little notification to let them know and what it means for the teen is that they are

in our most protective settings for who can contact them so the can't be contacted by someone or an account they don't know or are not connected with the amount of time that they spend so we limit it to to 60 minutes and send a notification and then also we have built out even more in

terms of the content that your teenager can see so we've always been very strict about the kind of

content your your teenager might see on Instagram and a teenager has a very different content experience to an adult on Instagram and I think that's really important for your listeners because

usually from someone that they are connected with and they might think yourselves oh I don't want

my teenager to see that and to just let parents know that actually your teenager has got a very different experience where they're using Instagram they have had before but even even more now

“that they're in a teen account experience and then the last thing we did which really was I think”

quite groundbreaking in the industry is that if your teenager is under the age of 16 so recognizing the difference between the younger and the older teen is if your teen is under the age of 16 they cannot change any of these settings these much more the most protective settings that we have on Instagram they can't change any of those with an out appearance permission to do so and so that means for example that if your teenager is on Instagram they have a private account by default and that

means they can only be communicated with and they can only follow and follow back and it's really quite a limited experience or a protective experience or is a right word for it. If your teenager wants to have a public account and they try to they try to kind of move the toggle across which is what you would do on Instagram in your settings they'll be told you cannot change this without a parent's permission and then they send a pop-up to say you know ask your parent for permission

it sets up what's called a parental supervision tool on Instagram and then the parent will be notified to say your teen wants to change some of their settings and we've done that for two reasons one is we want to take the burden away for parents so when your teen is on Instagram they know that they're in the most protective settings but they also know that if your younger teen does try to change any of these they're going to be in that conversation with you then not

going to be able to do without you. So that's those trying to strike the right balance between taking that burden away from parents you know some parents do want to be more involved and that's great if they do and if they do there's there's more insights we can give them when they're in parental supervision we can give them a lot of information about the amount of time their teen is spending and they can limit the time even further so they can see that the teen has been messaging

but that's that is the balance for trying to strike with teen accounts which is taking the burden away

from the parent but also the parent wants to be more involved they can amazing thank you for that

what about I know this is a relatively new tool that obviously you guys have spent years creating

“is it 100% there is there still room to grow I think speaking for myself and also”

probably a lot of parents we're concerned about exposure to we're talking eating disorder content sexualized imagery extreme comparison culture you can still have a comparison sort of experience so you can still have a oh she's you know this and I'm that whatever it may be so where are we at do you think in the scale of getting there and is meta still improving the content that teens are seeing so the first part of it is have we got there and there's a couple of things there one is

we launched teen accounts in the US and a couple of other markets back in September 2024 so it's been rolled out over the last 18 months or so and now it's we've got teen accounts globally we know that we now have hundreds of millions of teens across the globe have been moved into teen account experience which is which is great and it was technically quite complex because of a

teenager had been on Instagram before and say they had a public account we were basically

moving them into a private account and moving them into our most restrictive setting so technically it was quite a complex thing to do it's done it's rolled out globally it's great we know some statistics around how well it's going so we know that 97% of the teens who are in that younger below 16 category have stayed in the most protective setting so they haven't tried to change the settings we think that's a that's a really good signal and there's two reasons for that one is

or we think there's two reasons that we can't get into the minds of every teenager one is we think that maybe they haven't really noticed and that's great with us if they if they are

“in a more protective experience and they haven't really noticed I think we feel like we've done a job”

pretty pretty well there or the other kind of thought around this is that teens really do appreciate protective experience teens do not want to be contacted by someone they don't know they don't want to see content that they don't think is appropriate for their age so I think it's probably mixture of those two things to your question about the kind of content that you're a teen that you might be seeing it's it's really it's really important one because what we found when we

rolled our teen accounts we got some very good feedback from parents and we are constantly in communication and in conversation with parents we we do that through surveys with you that

smart events that have been across the entire of the the U.S. which has been brand of I've been

able to go to a few of them myself and we just we bring parents along we have conversations of them we get some feedback from them and one of the things parents said to us was was still a bit confused about what this content is there are confused about you know when we talk about what is age appropriate kind of what does that actually mean and we in the tech industry talk about we would age gate I mean if you're like a normal parent you're thinking one earth does that

mean what is age gating mean I mean we you know we we don't do ourselves any favorites by speaking very techy language so what we did last October we launched last October it was we've been aligned our content ratings and our content settings on Instagram to a more familiar mental model for parents which is movie ratings and you talked about that so for parents of teenagers who are 13 plus so we want you to be 13 to be on Instagram with Instagram as a platform for those

who are 13 and over that's the first thing to say and we ask for your age and we've lots of very

technical reasons and technical ways that we check for your age and we age verify you but we want parents to know and to understand that familial mental model which is if you're a parent and you think you're so okay what is the 13 plus movie in the US or in Europe or whatever else it is and it's different movie relations and different countries but is that the kind of experience my teen is having on Instagram that was the question that they asked us so we looked at all of our

policies the way we enforce our policies and we align them as much as we could to what a parents familial mental model is around movie rating and two examples you mentioned a few examples there are two examples that give you one is around nudity so if you're watching a 13 plus movie in the US and other places you can have a little bit of nudity as long as it's in the arc of a story or maybe in some humor but it's like very confined but you can still like could be still

some nudity in a movie 13 plus and Instagram we don't allow any nudity at all doesn't matter

“what the context is it's no nudity so that's how we realize that actually went further than movie”

ratings but another example would be say profanity so the use of of swear words again in a 13 plus movie there's there quite strict about the number of swear words you can hear and the types of swear words and so we looked at our policies and the way we would recommend content to teen so if it's a real or if it's a story from a friend actually we've really limited profanity that your teenager when they're on Instagram the kind of swear words they might hear exactly the kind of

things you would expect to hear in a 13 plus movie the other one is that we've restricted even further our search so you you talked about body image this is really important for all of us but for teenagers and so if a teenager does search for certain words and I'm not going to say those but like certain words in that in that space they won't get any search results at all in this experience on Instagram and indeed they might be served a provided with a little bit of resource so give search for this word

“if you want to you could be connected with civil society a charity that that works in in that space”

but we go even stricter so even a word like gore you know it's not it's not a violating word per se in and of itself but we do not want teenagers to to be searching and then finding a lot of gore because you know that's kind of graphic and could be upsetting and particularly for those younger teens we do not want them coming across this accidentally so even a word like gore if a teenager was to look at to search for that word they will find any search results on Instagram so

and the other thing we we're going to continually do is if a parent is in the supervisor experience on Instagram we're actually asking those parents when they report something to us we're prioritizing

their report that's the first thing I'd say but also we're saying to them is this piece of content

something that you think is inappropriate for a teenager or is it appropriate for a teenager because you know parents we want to we want to get it right we want to understand how parents think and not every parent agrees but that's fine but we do want to have a bit more of a channel backwards and forwards with parents when they're reporting anything to us or they see a piece of content to let them know that actually that's the kind of content to your teenager wouldn't be able to see

if they were using Instagram as well and that's a larger that's a larger feedback is that right

“so it's not sort of like like you can literally shape your child's algorithm which I think I just”

came up with a really good idea but it's not that sort of live like is this good for your teenager or not? Well it's it's not completely shaping the algorithm it's a great book boy because it's not

Supervisory tool on Instagram have you gotten feedback in general from parents about Tina

“Counts and especially sort of the the things that I'm again worried about where I think it's”

so great and much needed and it's certainly like taking that that base level of like you okay there's these parameters and that's not going to be absolutely grotesque and whatnot again it's it's really important you want to be assured and to feel confident that your teenager when they are using Instagram with their on our platform are seeing content that is appropriate for their age if something is depicting violence or something in that space

we don't recommend that kind of content teens and we're very very careful about that and we use

we use AI as well as you know we've we've always had AI just some extent that matter that

helps us to to find and remove that kind of content and to do it proactively so we we've always said that I would say the AI is really enhanced in this space now as well so we're able to look at a piece of content and and and and remove it and we've got very very high race of removal of content that wouldn't be appropriate for anyone to see on our platform but then we do differentiate between what's okay for an adult to see and what's not okay for a teenager to see

and something like graphic content we would not want a teenager to see that kind of content so they might even search for it and that's okay they might be you know naturally

inquisitive because of something going on the news and they'll see some content maybe

relate to that but not not graphic content or content that depicts you know violence, extreme violence or gore of things of that and we we put a sense to efficiency and so we say to them look this this isn't appropriate for your for your age and let them know why because if we transparent with them and hopefully they'll understand like there's reasons why we haven't shown you this this type of content so we we do and and Conon you talked about you

know eating disorder type of you know if if if a young person is is going through something

“like that and this is this is really important because what you what we have found from the experts”

that we work with is that social media does have a role in destigmatism some of these issues so if you are an adult or a teenager and you're you're you're suffering something that you want to be able to find a community and that's that's okay that's great you want to be able to find potentially resources and that's that's okay what you do not want is to see content that is upsetting or as you say kind of content being recommended to you that's going to make you feel

worse about yourself or you know so we've very strict rules about the kind of content that a teenager can see a campy promotional of any kind of of of Asian sort of or glorification but even an mission of having an Asian disorder or or you know mental health issues we're actually very careful even if it's a mission to not recommend the kind of kind of not show the kind of content to teenagers so again we're trying to strike a balance if someone is is talking about their

recovery journey we don't want to stigmatize anyone who's sharing their recovery journey but we do take a more precautionary approach that we wouldn't show that kind of content to a teenager and even if the teenager is is following that person and following that they might be a friend we still wouldn't let them see the content if it's not appropriate for their for their age if it's not the kind of content you would expect to see in a in a movie your teen is not going to

see it on on Instagram and and the other thing the the kind of flip side of that then is if if someone posts and their post isn't available for someone because we don't think it's a appropriate for them actually very transparent with that person so they can go into the sessions that they can see why their content is no longer available no longer recommendable and no longer available to to a teen so they can also see ah okay I see I understand that that Instagram is

being more protective for teens but also if I want to remove that I changed that post I could do so so actually my friend could could see it but it's not going to be upsetting to them does that make sense I know it's quite a complicated set of balances we're trying to retire to strike yeah we are

“and you also mentioned AI which I kind of want to touch on as well but is there I think I'm so old”

but I believe that there is an AI oh my god I'm like I don't I don't even know what is inside of the app that I make a living on I think AI is obviously becoming a lot more integrated into all kinds of social platforms and so what risks did meta identify 14 specifically and I believe I saw a report that actually meta restricted one-on-one interactions with AI was that correct?

something that we all have to be conscious of is that our teenagers have grown up as digital

“natives we call them digitalised because they just have grown up in this very very different”

world so certainly in the world that I grew up in and AI is just such a huge part of the conversation right now and and and has massive opportunity for teenagers and how you know how they're going to be able to use AI and utilize it into the future is extraordinary and so exciting but again as a parent you're thinking okay that all sends really exciting and also really scary and you want to be able to navigate that and kind of hold the hand of your child or your teenager

through that particularly as it's very new technology very new to you know a lot of kind of normal people out there like what does this mean so so there's a few things out at Instagram that

we've done first of all we haven't talked about it but in the parental supervision tool on Instagram

we give parents even more insights into how their teenager is engaging on Instagram and one of those things that we do is it's messaging insights so if you're a teenager and you are

“DMing that's direct messages that's what you do on Instagram you're DMing”

friends you're parents actually can see over the last seven days who you've been DMing who you've been messaging on Instagram and that was those trying to strike the right balance between some parents wanting to have actually see those messages kind of opening the diary type of you know kind of analogy I'm a child of the ages and 90s other parents just know but I I don't want to go that far but I do want to know who my teenager so in messaging insights

in the supervision tool which is really easy to find just in settings good supervision you can set it up and then you can get all this information about your teenager you see they've been messaging that also includes if your teenager has contracted or or had a message with an AI chatbot so that has included in any of the messaging insights we give that's said at Instagram we we have really restricted the AI chatbot that your teenager can connect with so this has been

for several months in very very restrictive so only chatbots who are in the space of kind of education really have we we have what we call a whitelist which is yeah actually a prove go through like a list like in the old fashion days or we go through a list of the kinds of chatbots that actually we think is appropriate for a teenager to be able to communicate with however even now as you said we were made announcement this week about it which is we were starting

even further because and the reason we've done that is because this area is moving so fast and we are at matter building in this space and building AI chatbots and we're doing a huge amount of work and and we certainly in this space and what we made a decision was let's just take a pause let's do the building and then we'll decide what kind of rather parents should have predisposition what kind of AI chatbots what kind of AI's your teenager can have any kind of

you know a connection or communication with so press a bit of a pause button and the reason we've done that is because we're building so fast we want to be take that precaution approach

“and also say let's let's wait let's do the building that's focus on that that's the most important”

thing at the moment and then we'll look at how we make sure that it's a really safe space for teens to be in so again I hope your listeners who are listening think no that we're taking the space really very very seriously because it is it's it's kind of the new and an exciting space but we really want to get it right so we really we really want to get it right yeah I mean that's reassuring

for me from the AI perspective because I don't think the answer is to fear everything and never

let your child do it our children are doing it in school right they're learning how to do it but like you said this is something that's so brand new it's evolving every single second and so the sort of unregulated access maybe we're not there yet you know we gotta get some good some good guardrails in before we just let it be in the trap out of an Instagram we only have a few more minutes and so this is gonna be maybe my most hard hitting question which is you know there's so

much research now that wasn't there before it's only coming out now of course and about short form videos in general and their effect on let's say a developing brain and put that aside from just regular brains perhaps not great for regular brains either but especially for these teens that we're talking about kids teens short form content videos really impacting the brain in negative ways

what is meta seeing behind the scenes talking about now that this brand new sort of research is coming out because that's not something that we're parental controlling around it could be the most appropriate content in the world it could even be toddler content but it's only these

30 second videos swipe 30 second videos swipe 30 second videos swipe sort of that dopamine hit

what's the conversation there around the research that's coming out around that yeah and this this touches on time doesn't it's like the the amount of time that your teenager might be spending on on one particular upper on their phone and then what they're doing with that time so it might be 20 minutes and it might be a really you know positive 20 minutes because they're engaging with something that is is humorful and they've had a long day at school and they're just having a bit

of a laugh they might be sharing something with a friend because it resonates with them so it could be a school project you know there could be a lot of ways that a teenager is using

the platform in a really positive way but it might also be 20 minutes where they're they're not

“feeling positive about it so so again this is this is a really important one because what we”

looked at was and we have wonderful experts that we we talked to that are external experts from who are academics who are pediatricians who are you know clinical psychologists who work in this space and we talked to them about all of these issues and we look at all of the research that's out there as well and one thing on time that was interesting is that there is no there is there's a lot of research being done but there is no conclusive piece of research that says this is a fact

right so and actually there's two very new large longitudinal studies that were released just this

week one in the UK one Australia about teen social media use and the one in the UK so it was

a closer to to to my heart you know talked about the fact that and this was you know an evidence based research that looked at you know adolescence use of technology and that it doesn't really have a cause of factor in in whether they're feeling good or bad or bad about themselves a lot of it is about everything in moderation that that's a lot of what the research says however let's say is that we do look at this and we think okay where is their evidence and how do we follow

that evidence so where we do find evidence that's more conclusive is around the need for sleep

“and how important sleep is to let developing mind you you know you talked about the developing”

mind so there's a lot of research and expert opinion that sleep is incredibly important for teenagers and so we factor that into teen accounts and what we did with teen accounts is that we we turn off all notifications between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. and the teenager can't change that they can't make it less time without the parent being involved in that conversation but then we took it even further so for teenage or for parents again if they want to they can go into

parent's supervision tool and Instagram and they can just completely block Instagram for certain periods of day or 24 hours a day they might say you know what I only want you to have Instagram for half an hour on a Saturday morning when I'm around and I'm going to kind of sort of hold your hands you know metaphorically as you're moving into this new space of being you know digital native and using social media so parents can block it completely but if the parent is you know busy

and and other things they want to do just to know that actually for Instagram your teenager is muted all the new notifications from 10 p.m. until 7 a.m. again based on that research that sleep is so important well like we will continue to have these conversations with experts and look at the research and and and like so those two pieces of research that that that were released

“this week were longitudinal but it's still kind of early days I think that's one of the things”

that so many people I think are concerned about you know the smartphone use and all of us using our smartphones for everyday things that's already quite new it's really on the last kind of 10 years or a little bit more than that so I do feel like we are all kind of navigating this space together again we're really committed to understanding is and evolving our tools and I think what you'll hear more of from Instagram and met over the next few months and years is that we are the

teen account experience is going to be our kind of most protective experience for teens but we're going to keep on adding to it so another example of where we added to it you know not that long ago back in 2025 was going live on Instagram so we restrict that completely so if you're

for that we're going to continually fold any of our new safety features once we test them

“and we're going to fold them into teen accounts of fold them into teen accounts so that you know hopefully”

every single teen who's using teen accounts is getting that most protective what we hope is an industry leading experience when they're when they're using Instagram hmm okay well for anyone listening what it sounds like to me is if you are concerned about the rapid video exposure or your child's already in social media what we do know is length of time spent does matter if your child is scrolling or an adult is scrolling for eight hours a day not going to be great for brain development

and to sort of have those guardrails in place I didn't know that about teen accounts that you actually could limit the time let's say after school for 30 minutes and that's a nice way that it's not coming out of your mouth every single time as a as a fight so I think that's a great option but you know I think these are all things that we as parents have to we're navigating this Instagram is navigating this all in real time I'm happy to hear that Instagram is really committed

and as more studies come out you know perhaps those things are gonna continue to change and in the meantime you know we know that scrolling for eight hours a day not good bring it back to 15 bring it back to 10 bring it back to 20 it's just this new wild wild west yeah have the conversation

“I think it's you know it's so important isn't it that that you you sit down with your teenager and”

you ask them okay you've been you know you're using head well for it's well how long do you use Instagram for or how long you're spending on your phone some parents might be surprised and there are tens of days and really it's like 10 minutes it's not that long and what the experience we've seen is that teenagers will jump from up to up and I think that's something that parents do need to be very conscious of is that actually adults probably spend a bit longer on one up they

have a kind of preferred up that which they love and if you really you know invested in teens and I

see this with my daughter who's my 16 year old is that she will first well they always give you

very brutal feedback and they so that's we all love about our teenagers but my daughter will jump from one up to another so she might spend 10 minutes on her phone and in that 10 minutes she will check out a few things on Instagram she'll look at some stuff on TikTok and then she might you know message a couple of friends and all within the space I mean they're so fast they're so proficient aren't they and that those are the these are digital nations and then they put the phone down

or you know go on do something else so do you have a conversation with your teen about the use do they jump around do they find one up more helpful than another up when they are spending time what are they looking at are they are they are they looking at things that their friends have posted or they direct messaging their friends because again that's probably quite a positive experience that's connection right versus are they just consuming content that

doesn't make them feel very good about themselves really encourage parents to have have that conversation with their teenager but also to know that if they if they do want to restrict Instagram and and you say take the burden away we really really want to take the burden away from the parents so blame us say you know Instagram is restricted for you and you can only get it on Saturday mornings or you know tries a week or whatever it is blame blame Instagram we're we're fine with that

and go into the parental set and supervision settings on Instagram and just you know you just know what's right for your family every parent knows what's better for their teenager I mean that is that is true for you know you're a teen more than anyone else and you know what you think is the right amount of time that they should be spending and how they should be spending their time when they're using their phone and I'm having those really open conversations

is so important it's probably very uncomfortable especially your child is wanting to explore the world more something that came to my mind too is is modeling so if my kid is seeing me on Instagram for you know three hours a day while while I'm cooking dinner while I'm brushing my

“teeth while I and and I think you know we're all kind of pulling back in that way and making it a”

really a more positive experience for everyone and having a conversation hey what were you you you know what were you watching today or were you DMing or were who are you talking to or did

you see the thing funny is there anything you know here's what I saw today here's what I did today

up mine I actually spent way too long on it today and I actually don't feel that great right now I kind of need to actually maybe have a reset you know how are you feeling really keeping that dialogue open yeah absolutely I I I always lead with that with my with my teenagers and I always say look I the hand-on-hars I probably haven't been great and I you know oftentimes will be you know working

got younger children and you're working and you're working at home it's really hard so but also

to be try to be non-judgmental if your teen does come to you and and want to talk about it because

“I think often our immediate reaction is oh no what did you see and who posted it you know and kind of”

did you report it and all those kind of very you know protective ways the parents want to protect

their teenagers rather saying okay what happened how do you feel and try to work with them around

“something if they have had a less and positive experience because you want them to be able to come”

to you about if they've had a positive experience great but if also if they've had an actually

the experience you want them to be able to come to you and to feel like they can come to you without

“you judging them too to badly and this also works in real life for the record that's that's a tip for”

both digital experiences and real life experiences to to yeah keep the channels open. Tara thank you so much for this conversation I learned a lot that I didn't know and I appreciate your work in you know really helping to protect teens and and keeping the conversation going and the commitment to safety here. Now well look thank you thanks for having me and I hope I hope your listeners have do feel a little bit more of a sense of reassurance but also that this is this is tough and we are all

navigating at the same time as parents as parents and madam as parents I'd there. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.