Sweeping Instagram changes welcomed by Communications Minister, but verification tools raise questions

Social media giant Meta has been accused of trying to downplay its lack of age verification tools by forcing millions of children into new “teen accounts” on Instagram.

Meta announced the new restrictions for teenage users on Tuesday, meaning those who already hold an account will be moved on to a version of the popular app preloaded with content restrictions over coming months.

New users under the age of 18 will be automatically placed into a “teen account”, which includes a “sleep mode” — silencing notifications between 10pm and 7am — and an anti-bullying feature that blocks offensive words in comments or message requests.

However, several questions remain about Meta’s ability to determine whether kids lie about their age, resulting in users circumnavigating these new features.

Shadow communication minister David Coleman said there were still concerns about young people seeing potentially dangerous content.

“By its own admission, Meta isn’t changing anything on age verification,” Mr Coleman said. “Meta will do everything it can to avoid a real system of age verification, because it will lead to them losing huge numbers of underage users over time.”

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said while she welcomed any new safety features, more needed to be done by big tech companies.

“As a Government, we want to do everything we can to keep young Australians safe,” she said.

“We note that this is on one platform, and again, we note the platforms should do more, and today’s announcement shows that they can do more.”

As part of the announcement, the company said it would be testing new age verification technology in early 2025, despite the changes rolling out across the US, UK, Canada and Australia this week.

“Teens may lie about their age and that’s why we’re requiring them to verify their age in more places, like if they attempt to use a new account with an adult birthday,” the company said.

Youth and Early Childhood Minister Anne Aly claimed the company was trying to “resist” the Federal Government’s proposed legislation for age restrictions on social media.

“Every parent, every teacher, every grandparent, knows the negative impacts that social media can have on children,” Dr Aly said.

“I think in cases like this — and research from around the world confirms this — the social media companies are going to resist any kind of form of legislation or regulation and propose voluntary-type measures.”

Education Minister Jason Clare echoed the claims, saying Meta’s move didn’t go far enough.

Facing a parliamentary inquiry earlier this month, the company’s vice-president and global head of safety, Antigone Davis, said the responsibility should be on app stores to determine whether users were under age.