On Tuesday, Instagram announced it will implement a suit of changes for its teen users: accounts for kids ages 16 and younger will become private, restricted settings will need parent approval to be lifted, and notifications will be silenced from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.

The feature, called Teen Accounts, is meant to address the harm social media can do to young peoples' mental health.

Switching teens to private accounts means they can only be messaged or tagged in posts and comments by accounts they follow, and restrictive search will filter out harmful words and content. The platform also revamped its time reminder feature; teens will get a notification telling them to leave the app after 60 minutes each day.

This is a good first step, says Dr. Shannon Bennett, associate director of the center for youth mental health at NewYork-Presbyterian.

"The opportunity cost while using social media is sleep or in-person socialization," she says. "I think it's encouraging to see some effort being made."

Experts agree the new features might net positive changes, but say its really too early to tell.

Social media might be a major factor in youth loneliness

In 2020, an explosive report revealed Facebook knew Instagram was harmful to youth mental health: 32% of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse, researchers said in a presentation posted to Facebook's internal message board.

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy named social media as one of the main reasons young people feel more alone in his 2023 report "Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation," 

"Several examples of harms include technology that displaces in-person engagement, monopolizes our attention, reduces the quality of our interactions, and even diminishes our self-esteem," Murthy wrote "This can lead to greater loneliness, fear of missing out, conflict, and reduced social connection."

In his best-selling book "The Anxious Generation" NYU social psychologist Johnathan Haidt also cited social media and smartphones as a major cause of youth loneliness.

"Kids going through puberty online are likely to experience far more social comparison, self-consciousness, public shaming, and chronic anxiety than adolescents in previous generations, which could potentially set developing brains into a habitual state of defensiveness," Haidt wrote for The Atlantic.

'It's encouraging to see some effort being made'

Upon Meta's unveiling of Teen Accounts, experts expressed mixed feelings.

Haidt released a statement saying he is "cautiously optimistic" about the changes.

"Of course, this is just a first step in reforming an ecosystem that badly needs a simpler, more robust way to identify minors and install real age gating, especially for those under 13," his statement read. "Most of the problems with social media will still plague teens on Instagram. But this is a good start, and I hope it is just the first of many steps from Meta."

These features do address the major concerns parents and doctors have regarding social media use, Bennett says: "It is a matter both of how much teens are using Instagram and the content they are viewing."

Teens are using the platform too much and digesting some "extreme or disturbing content," she says. And, they are often doing so at the expense of face-to-face connection.

However, only time will reveal how effective the changes will be, especially since kids can easily lie about their age.

"On other platforms age restrictions were almost universally ignored," Bennett says.

However, a growing body of research contradicts the finding that social media is the defining culprit responsible for young peoples' unhappiness.

So, implementing restrictions might not really matter, says Jeffrey Hall, a communications professor at the University of Kansas who studies relationships and social interaction.

"As there is no strong, causal association between time spent using social media and mental health, it is unlikely that these changes will make a difference for teens across the board," Hall says.

He also raises concerns about enforcing age restrictions: "With the ease of falsifying age, it is hard to know whether these changes will benefit those who are most at risk."

While skeptical, Hall echoes Bennett's sentiment that only time will tell if Teen Accounts will help in any way.

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