Meta-owned Instagram is now rolling out a new safety feature, which is designed to help parents support their teenagers’ mental health. Through this new feature, Instagram will now send automatic alerts to parents if their teenager repeatedly searches for terms related to suicide or self-harm within a short period of time.
Here is more to it.
What is new in this Feature and how will it work?
First of all, this new feature will only work for those parents who have already turned on the “Instagram Supervision” tool. Once active, if a teen tries to look up phrases that suggest they want to hurt themselves within a short period of time, an alert will be triggered.
Parents will receive the notification via email, text message, WhatsApp, or an in-app alert, depending on the contact information available. Tapping the notification will open up a full-screen message explaining that their teen has repeatedly attempted to search for phrases like suicide or self-harm. In the alert message, there will also be expert-backed resources and guidance to teach parents on how to talk to their teen about these sensitive topics. Instagram acknowledges that receiving such an alert could be distressing, but says the aim is to ensure parents have the information they need to step in early if their teen may be struggling.
Instagram says that the goal here is to let parents know if their child is struggling so they can step in and help early. While Instagram already blocks these search results and shows “help” resources to the teen, these new alerts ensure the parents are also in the loop.
Availability
Starting next week, this feature will rollout frst to parents who are already using Instagram’s supervision tools in the US, UK, Australia, and Canada. With plans to expand it to additional regions later in 2026, though the exact regions weren’t mentioned in the press release.
Meta also plans to bring similar alerts to their AI features later this year, notifying parents if a teen has concerning conversations with Meta’s AI.
