Instagram introduces PG-13 movie ratings system to filter content for teens

Instagram will moderate content for users under 18 with filters guided by the PG-13 movie rating system, Meta, the platform’s parent company, announced Tuesday in its latest effort to address concerns about teen safety online.

The new system will restrict posts that contain crude language, risky stunts, drugs or other content that “could encourage potentially harmful behaviour.” The rules will also apply to Meta’s generative AI tools.

Under these safeguards, teenage users will be prevented from following or interacting with accounts that are found to share content that is inappropriate for their age.

Current policies already prohibit recommending sexually suggestive content, graphic or disturbing images, and adult content such as tobacco or alcohol sales to teens, Mita noted.

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“Teen accounts were already designed to protect teens from inappropriate content, and over the past year, we’ve improved our age-appropriate guidelines to hide more potentially inappropriate content in the updated default 13+ content setting,” the company said in its announcement.

“We decided to more closely align our policies with an independent standard that parents know, so we reviewed our age-appropriate guidelines against PG-13 movie ratings and updated them accordingly. While there are of course differences between movies and social media, we made these changes so that teens’ experiences in a 13+ environment feel closer to the Instagram equivalent of watching a PG-13 movie,” he added.

Teens won’t be able to opt out of the new system without parental permission, and parents may choose a more restrictive setting for their children.

Similar to how some suggestive content or strong language might be included in a PG-13 movie, Mita said teens may occasionally see similar content on Instagram but the company works to keep those instances as rare as possible.

Teenagers will not be able to opt out of the new system without parental permission. (Lorenzo Di Cola/Noor Photo via Getty Images/Getty Images)

“This is the most significant update to teen accounts since we introduced them last year, and builds on the automatic protection that teen accounts already provide to hundreds of millions of teens globally,” Mita said. “We know teens may try to avoid these restrictions, which is why we’ll use age prediction technology to place teens within certain content protections — even if they claim to be adults.”

The new system comes amid criticism and lawsuits alleging that the company failed to protect teenage users from harmful content or misled them about the psychological harm caused by its platforms.

A report released in September showed that many of Instagram’s security features are not working well.

Meta was also found to have allowed inappropriate chatbot behavior, with the bots engaging in “romantic or sensual conversations.”

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Teen users will be blocked from following or interacting with accounts found to share age-inappropriate content. (Jens Buettner/Image Alliance via Getty Images / Getty Images)

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The company added safeguards in August for teens across its AI products by training its systems to avoid exchanges and discussions about self-harm or suicide with young users.

The new rating settings have been released in the US, UK, Australia and Canada, and are expected to be fully launched by the end of the year.

“We realize that no system is perfect, and we are committed to improving over time,” Meta said. “We hope this update reassures parents that we are working to show safe, age-appropriate content to teens on Instagram by default, while also giving them more ways to shape their teen experience.”

Meta also offers more guarantees for teenage users on Facebook.

Reuters contributed to this report.