Instagram Updates Its Parental Controls & More

Instagram, Pinterest + Nintendo Switch PLUS Mother's Day

Hi!

This week I breakdown the recent Instagram parental controls updates and reevaluate Pinterest. In Worth Flagging I share a link to my Mother’s Day Gift Guide and an update on Nintendo Switch. Let’s dive in.

I made this image using Google Gemini AI

Instagram

Instagram updated their parental controls earlier this month. There are some good things:

• teens can no longer go LIVE

• adults can't message teens they don't know

• IG will be using AI to detect underage accounts

but there are definitely significant safety gaps that remain:

• parents still can't monitor DM’s

• kids can still lie about their age to get on

• strangers can still lie about who they are to pose as friends

Here’s the rundown:

• Default Private Accounts for Under 16. This means only approved followers can see posts and interact, minimizing the risk of unwanted contact from strangers.

  • This is helpful BUT- plenty of strangers get to kids by pretending to be people they know or go to their school AND anyone can still see account details even if the account is private.

• Under 16’s can no longer go live.

  • This is helpful

• Adults exhibiting suspicious behavior are restricted from finding or interacting with teen accounts, including being excluded from suggested users and having their comments automatically hidden on teen posts

  • This is a very good idea, I hope it works

• AI tracking for age misrepresentation.

  • This should help. TikTok already does this. And, as we know, plenty of kids lie about their age to get on social.

• Notifications when a user has been on the app for more than hour, encouraging them to take a break.

  • There are whole separate apps people pay for to do this for them–so building this in might be good. Or, it might just be a brief annoyance like Apple’s time settings– where you get a notification and you just close it and keep going.

My analysis of the new updates

• Parents still can’t see the content of messages unless they use an app like Bright Canary for iPhone or Bark for Android

• Strangers still don’t announce themselves as strangers– they are sneaky and motivated. Many infiltrate friend groups by pretending to go to your school, etc. And, if they are blocked they’ll just make new accounts.

• Kids will continue to lie about their age and AI isn’t perfect. Until age verification becomes real, Instagram and all social media and many many other apps in the app store are still not appropriate for kids.

• As a general rule, if your kid has to give a false age to be on an app, that's a pretty big sign that they shouldn’t be on there.

• Instagram, like Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and so many other adult spaces that kids want to be in, is not safe. There are active predators, inappropriate content and unsupervised spaces to chat.

• Check out my previous articles on Instagram here and here

Pinterest

Ok now Pinterest

Pinterest is often overlooked when we think about social media apps but according to its CEO, Bill Ready, more than 40% of Gen Z is on Pinterest and thats the fastest growing audience segment. So parents its worth looking at.

I will start by saying Pinterest does not have parental controls. I do not like this. Parents can not restrict content or view content on Pinterest without using a 3rd party parental control app or logging in as their child.

BUT, they do have one significant setting:

• Pinterest is the only platform that does private only under 16 (not private by default, private ONLY)

AND they are working on an interesting new feature:

I heard Bill Ready speak last month at the Common Sense Summit On Kids & Families where he shared that they will be rolling out a new feature that if you are School aged and you try to open Pinterest during school hours you’ll get a prompt saying please come back after school and link to turn off notifications

I love that.

Worth Flagging

1) I made a Mother’s Day Gift Guide. Its got techie gifts and also just stuff I like that I think other mom’s might like. You can check it out here.

3) Nintendo Switch 2 pre-orders just opened on April 24th (pre-order was originally supposed to start April 9th but was delayed because of U.S. tariffs). Product will ship beginning June 4th. One new feature that I'm keeping an eye on: a new C button has been added to the controller that facilitates game chat. More on that in a separate post so stay tuned.

Events

I’m hosting 2 Zoom Events in May and you’re invited!

1. “Hot Tips About Group Chat” - 5/13 Invite here

2. “Lunchtime Tech Hotline” for Paid Subscribers- 5/6 at noon. If you are not a paying subscriber please considering upgrading so you can join us!