Instagram’s new PG-13 Teen Accounts take a page from TV history

Instagram is increasingly resembling television, a move that might make some parents happy but ultimately proves that tech companies are getting closer to complete victory in their campaign to grab as much attention as possible.

The company just announced a new default content setting for teen accounts that promises to only show teen users content that is “similar to what they would see in a PG-13 movie.” (There are also new settings that provide teens with roughly the equivalent of PG and R-rated content, although parents must approve the change.) Additionally, Instagram is exploring the idea of Launching a TV app Here's how to watch Reels on the big screen in your living room.

These developments fit well with the argument Derek Thompson made a few days before Instagram's announcement: “Everything is television.” Citing an FTC filing, he points out that only 7 percent of the time users spend on Instagram is consuming content from people they know. Podcasts now are on Netflixand AI can create an infinite gradient circle to tap into your consciousness. “Digital media, empowered by the serum of algorithmic feeds, has become super television: more pictures, more videos, more isolation,” writes Thompson.

A Brief History of the Television That Is Rotting Our Brains

Old-fashioned television was once extremely tame due to a combination of technological constraints, federal regulations, and societal norms. There used to be a limited number of channels because there was only a limited spectrum available for broadcasting. And because spectrum was limited, the federal government created an agency to control radio waves almost a century ago: the Federal Communications Commission.

In the early days of the medium, there were great fears that television would ruin the spirit of Americans, especially the younger generation. Broadcaster Edward R. Murrow condemned the rise of entertainment television as “the veritable opiate of the people.” an interview from 1957 with time. A few years later, in 1961, Newton Minnow gave his first speech as FCC Chairman of He described television as a “vast wasteland…” a series of game shows, formulaic comedies about completely unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private detectives, gangsters, more violence and cartoons.” This guy would have hated TikTok.

The bad things Minnow pointed out were especially bad because kids could tune in and see them whenever they stared at a screen. The FCC would eventually oversee the type of content that could be broadcast at certain times. Obscene content was illegal on television, however from 1978Profane or offensive content was allowed between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., when the children were presumably asleep. (You can Thanks George Carlin for that.) This boiled down to an early form of Age verificationwhich, as the Instagram announcement makes clear, continues to be a problem on the internet. It too seems insoluble.

Yet protecting children appears to be the only bipartisan motivation for regulating today's super-television. Whether it is The controversial social media post on the mental health crisis of young people or the “unacceptable risks“AI chatbots represent for children and young people that lawmakers have many reasons to impose new regulations on the platforms that have become the 21st century equivalent of broadcasters.” Senators Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn, co-sponsors of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), I recently started campaigning pass the bill through the Senate (again) before the end of the year.

However, things are changing quickly. When you consider new AI-powered feeds, like Sora from OpenAI And Meta's vibesIt's clear that digital media – or Super TV, if you will – has its own huge wasteland problem.

The mirage of an age-appropriate internet

Banning certain types of content is difficult when there is no single government agency monitoring the airwaves, or these days the tubes that keep us online. So the preferred route to regulation seems to be to create three internets: one for children under 13, one for teenagers and one for adults. A PG, PG-13 and R internet, if you will.

To do this successfully requires ID verification and the current state of age verification is a mess. In the last three years, 25 states have passed laws Sites with adult content, especially porn, must verify a user's age. This is the R-rated internet. Some of these states also require age verification for social media platforms. Because the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA) sets restrictions For websites that allow users under the age of 13, this is PG-13 internet. Presumably the PG versions of sites would include some of these protections, including the ability to turn off addictive algorithms. as New York recently proposed.

By the way, online age verification is really difficult. In most cases, to confirm someone's age, you need to confirm their identity. Free speech advocate warn that strict age requirements will prevent anonymous adults from accessing content protected by the First Amendment. Civil rights groups say age verification poses a major security risk, which seems to be a legitimate concern after the recent hack of an age verification company The data of 70,000 Discord users was exposed. High-tech age verification methods, such as using AI to estimate a user's age based on their activity or facial recognition to estimate age based on their appearance, are not yet proven. And most importantly, children can figure out how to get around age verification systems, whether by lying about their birthday or by using them virtual private networks (VPNs).

Looking back to the golden era of television, when game shows and bad words were the big dangers, you can see how much the stakes have changed. Digital media is based on mathematics so sophisticated that even the people who wrote the code are so sophisticated I don't know how it works. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok are interactive and intentionally addictive. Use of these products was linked Depression, anxiety and self-harm.

If the three-internet strategy works, it would be an improvement for parents who want their children to have an age-appropriate online experience. There would probably even be positive knock-on effects, such as better privacy protection are a feature of existing laws protect children online. Heck, it might even come in handy for those of us who just want to avoid it accidentally see a murder on her cell phone.

Creating feeds that are safer for kids, whether it's a movie review or not, is a step toward safer feeds for everyone. At least it's proof that Instagram and its competitors are capable of this.

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