Instagram is taking more measures to combat the narrative that the platform is damaging to young people by updating its Sensitive Content Control feature.
The feature launched last summer as a way for users to determine how much sensitive content they view in their feeds. Starting today, any new users under the age of 16 will be automatically placed with the "Less" option enabled for Sensitive Content Control. Instagram's press release says this is intended to make it "more difficult for young people to come across potentially sensitive content or accounts in Search, Explore, Hashtag Pages, Reels, Feed Recommendations and Suggested Accounts."
Additionally, any user under the age of 18 will be unable to pick the "More" state in the Sensitive Content Control and will only have the options of "Standard" or "Less."
If you want to view your Sensitive Content Control settings, you can do so right in the app, following these steps in the Instagram app:
- Tap on your profile.
- Tap the menu in the top right corner
- Tap Settings
- Tap Account
- Tap Sensitive content control
From here, you'll be able to change the state of your account between More, Standard, or Less if you're over 18 years of age. If not, you will only have the Standard and Less options available.
Instagram still pushing toward video
These changes to its Sensitive Content Control options may be way more received than many other announcements the company has made recently. The platform has been pretty clear with its intention to dive more into the video side of Instagram with much less emphasis on photos. It has tested a new design with limited users that resembled TikTok in many ways.
So far there's no real indication if these changes are still being tested or if they will roll out to every user anytime soon, but it's clear that Instagram is trying to keep up with TikTok, which has dominated the social media space as of recently.
