As of October 14, 2025, Instagram started enforcing rules for anyone under 18 years of age, making it so you cannot message anyone who has posted anything inappropriate or view anything inappropriate.
Parents can control what their children can view and who they can talk to. It also limits what their AI chatbots can say to them. It blocks searches for alcohol, or dangerous stunts even when misspelt. It will even block links sent to you that will lead to blocked websites.
Parents have led Meta to make these changes to protect their children from inappropriate posts. Meta invited parents to decide what post was age appropriate and which ones to block. Over three million parent ratings helped create the upstate. 95% of parents believe that these new guidelines are helpful, and 90% of parents said that the new guidelines were easy to understand.
