How can I keep my child safe on Instagram?

Instagram gives users the option to set their account to private so their posts can only be seen by their followers.

This setting can be found by going to ‘Privacy’ in their account settings and selecting ‘Private’.

Once an account is set to private people will need to send them a follow request to see their profile.

This feature helps to stop certain profiles from appearing on your child’s feed. It's different from blocking because you can still see each other’s profiles.

To ‘Mute’ another user you need to visit their profile and select the three dots in the right-hand corner. You can choose whether you want to mute their stories or feed posts.

Enabling this feature will help to stop content that your child might find upsetting or worrying, but that doesn’t go against Instagram’s Community Guidelines. For example, some types of violence. 

The Sensitive Content Control has three options. The three options are: 'More', 'Standard' and 'Less'. To view your Sensitive Content Control, go to your profile, tap the ‘Settings’ menu in the upper right corner, tap ‘Account’, then tap Sensitive Content Control.

This feature filters out comments with common offensive words, phrases or emojis and stops them from appearing on your posts. This setting is switched on by default but can be found in ‘Settings’ and then ‘Hidden words’.

You can also create personalised word lists to stop other words, emojis and phrases. For example, if there is something your child is scared of, or you don’t want them to see you can add this to the list.

Manage who can comment on your child’s posts by exploring comment control settings. This feature gives you the option to switch off comments completely or select whether only followers can comment.

This sends users reminders to take a break away from the app. You can set reminders to be sent every 10, 20 or 30 minutes. 

You can find this feature by selecting the three dots in the right-hand corner of your profile.