Meta, the social media platform’s parent company, have tried to combat criticism about the amount of harmful content it shows to users under the age of 18 by bringing in these measures.
At the moment, teenage users - who have to be at least 13 to have an account - are now being put on what they are called ‘teen accounts; by default.
They can only be tagged and contacted by accounts they follow, and sensitive content restrictions will be turned on. Content deemed offensive will be filtered from search and comments and notifications will appear after an hour to limit their usage.
Between the hours of 10pm and 7am, sleep mode will be activated, which will quieten notifications and send auto-replies to direct messages.
Those under 16 will only be able to amend these settings with parental permission but those aged 16 and 17 will be able to do it without.
Adult will also be provided with the ability to see what their children are doing and intervene.
Meta - which also own WhatsApp and Facebook - will unveil the changes for users the US, UK, Australia in the next two months in full while the teasing them for the EU and the rest of the world later this year.
The UK’s communications regulating body Ofcom called it “a step in the right direction” while adding they will need to do "far more to protect their users, especially children” in light of the new Online Safety Act.
Richard Wronka, the online safety supervision director said: "We won't hesitate to take action, using the full extent of our enforcement powers, against any companies that come up short.”
Ian Russell, the father of Molly Russell, a teenager who died by suicide after viewing harmful and sensitive content according to a coroner, urged social media companies to change their addictive algorithms and questioned why they hadn’t acted quicker.
He said: "The countries of the world are uniting and saying that the platforms haven't done well enough, and have to do better. That is why these announcements are being made by Meta, because they have to comply with the regulators of the world.
"I think the other side of the coin is, if they can do these measures now - which don't seem that complicated in many ways - you have to ask why they didn't take these steps sooner. If they had done, they would have protected far more young people and maybe saved some innocent young lives as well."
