About Instagram

Instagram is an American photo and video sharing social network owned by Facebook and is an entirely visual platform rather than relying on text. It currently (2020) has more than 1 billion users, who can follow friends, celebrities and influencers, and is the most popular social media platform for children aged 8 to18. A user can set up their profile to be either Public (accessible to everyone) or Private (only accessible to those who are approved by the profile holder).  Many teenagers make two accounts: one that is public that their parents know about and follow, and another that is private to which only their friends have access and where they may well post things they do not want their parents to see! A more worrying aspect is that cyberbullies set up fake accounts (called Finstas) which they can use to make unkind and inappropriate comments on other peoples´ posts, and there is no way of knowing who it is. Another feature of Instagram is the Stories - these are very short videos or photos which disappear after 24 hours. Many teenagers spend inordinate amounts of time every day watching stories or following influencers and can become quite addicted to this app.

Instagram has several facilities which should be of particular concern to parents of tweens and teenagers. Firstly, users can very easily search for particular content using hashtags, and the content is completely unfiltered so there is a huge amount of pornography available to view. Secondly, from within Instagram, users can access a Twitter search and from there they are then able to perform unfiltered searches. The solution to this, at least on iOS devices, is to add Twitter to the Unavailable list. Thirdly, there are absolutely no parental controls available on Instagram and it is also very easy for users to clear their search history.