BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — Screen time is looking a lot different for teenagers who love to scroll. Meta is automatically placing Instagram users 18 and under into a new type of private account, giving parents more control. "Limit who teens can contact, the content that they see and it also provides more ways for them to safely connect with their friends," said Kira Wong O'Connor, the Youth Policy Safety manager for Meta. "It includes messaging restrictions, which means that teens are going to be placed in the strictest messaging default. So they can only be messaged by people that they're mutually following." This comes as Meta has been hit with several lawsuits, which claim the company is harmful to young people. "One of the things that we heard directly from parents specifically is they had three concerns to their teens being online, and that was content, the type of stuff that they see when online, not just Instagram, but generally just on their devices. Contact, who teens can interact with, and then time spent, said O'Connor. According to Meta, parents will be able to see who their teens are messaging and block access to the app. Anyone under the age of 16 will need their parents' permission to change any of the safety settings. O'Connor added, "And we also have features within Teen Accounts which means that teens will be defaulted into a 60-minute daily limit." Teenagers will be able to change that time limit, but O'Connor said the feature includes a sleep mode where all notifications will be silenced overnight. "Teens will not receive any notifications from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. because one of the things we know, both from experts and from parents and probably just from being teens ourselves, is that sleep is really important at that age," she said. O'Connor said after signing up with Instagram, you are required to give your age. "But we also are working with technology that allows us to identify if a young person might not be the age that they're stating," said O'Connor. O'Connor said they have ways to know if a teenager pretends to be much older to try and escape those protections. "We do anticipate potentially that teens might try to misrepresent their age when they see that Teen Accounts has been implemented, but we do have a number of ways we're able to tell if they are the age they say," O'Connor said. In a message to parents, O'Connor said that they are listening. Family Focus: Parents warned about sextortion scams targeting children "We've been building a number of features based on feedback we hear directly from parents, but with Teen Accounts, we really hope that this gives them the peace of mind, that they know that their teens are getting an age-appropriate experience," O'Connor said. Latest News McDonald’s October Happy Meals have a nostalgic surprise Family Focus: Meta rolls out new accounts to protect teenagers on Instagram 'Feisty' alligator relocated from home in West Baton Rouge Parish Body found along river, identified as Baton Rouge man wanted in connection to murder Biden student loan forgiveness plan gets win in Georgia court