St. Thomas, ON – Monday August 18th 2025
Instagram: Scroll Smart. Stay Safe.
Presented by CRU and Sader – your STPS Youth Engagement Mascots
Instagram is one of the most popular apps for teens, but it’s not without risks. Kids and teens can be exposed to explicit content, harmful trends, unrealistic body image pressures and contact from strangers pretending to be their peers.
Meta has recently applied new updates to help keep everyone safe online.
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Predator Account Crackdowns: Meta removed over 135,000 accounts targeting kids.
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Child Photo Protections: new default nudity filters and stricter messaging rules for accounts with children.
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Family Center: allows parents to set time limits, review who kids follow and manage privacy settings.
Security & Privacy Tips:
Turn on Private Account and approve followers.
Disable location sharing.
Enable Two-Factor Authentication.
Use a strong, unique password.
Limit who can comment, tag or message you.
Regularly check and remove unknown followers.
Report/block any suspicious behavior immediately.
Parental Controls
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Use Meta Family Center for supervision, screen time limits and DM filters.
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Review posts, followers and engagement with your child.
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Keep an open conversation about what’s safe and what’s not safe to share online.
Instagram can be a fun and creative platform, but the best filter is awareness and supervision.
Stay safe, stay smart, and scroll responsibly!
