'Instagram Teen Accounts' to take effect in South Korea next year

'Instagram Teen Accounts', a policy change announced by Meta in September of this year to strengthen protection for underaged users, will take effect in South Korea some time next year.

Under the new change, accounts belonging to teenagers 13-17 years old will have built-in restrictions on who can contact, tag, and mention them, as well as the content they see. These 'Teen Accounts' will automatically be set to private, and these default settings can only be changed with permission from a parent or guardian. The accounts are also set to automatically hide potentially offensive comments and message requests. 

Some additional features include reminders to leave the app after 60 minutes each day, as well as inactive mode overnight. 

The changes will go into effect for Instagram users in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia first, with other users around the world seeing the changes some time next year. 

In South Korea, where a "deepfake porn crisis" swept across primary and secondary schools earlier this year, many are welcoming Instagram's new policy aimed at protecting underaged minors from cyber crimes. In particular, it was revealed that distributors of deepfake pornography most frequently obtained images of victims by accessing their photos on Instagram and other SNS platforms, a strong reason why the new policy appealed to Korean netizens. 

In fact, many believe that similar protection measures should be placed on all SNS platforms, including YouTube. 

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