Instagram will start alerting parents if their children repeatedly search for terms associated with suicide or self-harm, the company announced on Thursday. The feature applies only to parents enrolled in Instagram’s parental supervision program. The platform already blocks such content from appearing in teen accounts’ search results and directs users to helplines.
The move comes as Meta, Instagram’s parent company, faces two US trials over alleged harms to children. A trial in Los Angeles questions whether Meta’s platforms deliberately addict and harm minors, while another in New Mexico examines whether Meta failed to protect kids from sexual exploitation. Thousands of families, school districts, and government entities have sued Meta, claiming the platforms are designed to be addictive and expose children to harmful content.
Meta executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, have disputed that the platforms cause addiction. During the Los Angeles trial, Zuckerberg said existing scientific work had not proved social media causes mental health harms. Instagram head Adam Mosseri also pushed back, describing high usage as “problematic use” rather than clinical addiction. Researchers, however, have documented harmful consequences of compulsive use among young people.
The alerts will be sent via email, text, WhatsApp, or a notification through the parent’s Instagram account. Setting up supervision requires both the teen (aged 13 to 17) and parent to agree, with only one parent allowed per account. Meta said it aims to empower parents without sending unnecessary notifications. The company is also working on similar alerts about teens’ interactions with AI related to suicide or self-harm.
Advocacy groups criticised the initiative. Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay, said: “Meta is shifting the burden to parents rather than fixing the dangerous flaws in how it designs its algorithms and platforms. If a product is not safe for teens to use without parental intervention, it shouldn’t be marketed to teens at all.”
