Making wellbeing a priority on Instagram
Instagram’s goal is for the time young people (13+) spend on the platform to be positive, inspiring, intentional and balanced. Instagram has created a toolkit to help teens think about how they experience the platform and to offer tools and suggestions to improve that experience.
This toolkit is a collaboration between Instagram, The Jed Foundation (JED), and Internet Matters and is intended to help parents and carers with young people in their lives, navigate conversations about Instagram usage.
How does the toolkit support you and your teen?
This toolkit is designed to work alongside the young people’s resources, so we suggest you also look through the young people version. You’ll see that the toolkit talks openly about how to think about how time online can impact our emotional wellbeing. This is our key message.
When young people gain self-awareness, they can make informed decisions about how they use Instagram. The resources have been designed to encourage an open dialogue with them, opening up a vital channel of communication.
The toolkit also surfaces many Instagram features that you and your teen may not be aware of. Things like: being able to limit the audience on certain pieces of content to a small group of close friends or knowing how to turn off comments, provide the ability to be very intentional about who sees what.
We want young people to be able to take full advantage of the tools on offer. Alongside the tools, we’ve also provided a range of tips that can help to create a positive experience and strategies for managing the amount of time they spend online; if that is something they want to do.
What’s included in the toolkit?
The toolkit features advice and resources how you and your child can navigate Instagram safely, there’s quizzes and also helpful privacy and setting information.
We hope this toolkit helps you to better understand why your teen may be emotionally engaged with Instagram and sets you up for productive conversations around their usage. This collection of bitesize resources allows you to determine what works best for you and your family.
