Instagram will begin notifying parents when their teens repeatedly search for suicide or self-harm content. This is the first time Owner Meta has proactively reported search behavior rather than simply blocking it.
Starting next week, parents and teens who have signed up for Instagram’s Teen Accounts monitoring program in the UK, US, Australia and Canada will receive notifications when a young user searches for harmful terms within a short period of time. The feature will be rolled out globally at a later date.
Previously, Instagram restricted access to certain malicious content and directed users to support resources. The new measure goes one step further and, depending on available contact details, notifies parents directly via email, SMS, WhatsApp or within the Instagram app itself.
Meta said the alerts are intended to report sudden changes in search patterns that could indicate distress. Alerts will be accompanied by guidance and expert-backed resources to help parents navigate likely sensitive conversations.
The move drew sharp criticism from the Molly Rose Foundation, which was founded by the family of Molly Russell, who died in 2017 at the age of 14 after viewing self-harm and suicide content online.
Chief Executive Andy Burrows called the announcement “risky” and warned that “forced disclosures could do more harm than good.”
“Every parent would like to know if their child is struggling,” Burrows said, “but these flimsy notifications leave parents panicking and ill-prepared for the sensitive and difficult conversations that will follow.”
He added that the responsibility should be to prevent harmful content from appearing in the first place, rather than passing responsibility onto families after the fact.
The foundation previously published a study that said Instagram was still actively recommending content related to depression, suicide and self-harm to vulnerable young people. Meta rejected these findings, saying they misrepresented its security efforts.
Ged Flynn, executive director of Papyrus Prevention of Young Suicide, welcomed the move to increase transparency but argued it did not address deeper systemic problems.
“Parents contact us every day to share online how concerned they are about their children,” he said. “They don’t want to be warned when their kids are searching for harmful content, they don’t want mindless algorithms dumping it on them.”
“Play it safe”
Meta said the system is designed to “play it safe,” acknowledging that parents occasionally receive warnings even when there is no serious cause for concern.
The company said the feature builds on broader protections for teen accounts, which include automatically limiting exposure to sensitive material, restricting contact with teens, and completely blocking certain harmful searches.
Two in-app screenshots released by Meta show warnings titled “Warning about your teen’s safety,” followed by a screen with advice about “How to support your teen.”
Sameer Hinduja, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center, said the impact of the new feature would depend heavily on the quality of guidance provided along with the warning.
“You can’t notify the parents and then leave them alone,” he said. “What matters is the immediate support and the context that follows.”
Meta also confirmed that it plans to roll out similar parental alerts in the coming months when teens talk about self-harm or suicide with Instagram’s AI chatbot. The company said young people are increasingly turning to AI tools for advice and emotional support.
The expansion comes amid increased scrutiny of the impact of social media companies on children’s mental health.
Australia recently passed a law banning access to social media for under-16s, while policymakers in Spain, France and the United Kingdom are considering similar measures. In the US, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram boss Adam Mosseri faced legal challenges and congressional hearings over allegations that the company’s platforms were designed to attract and retain younger users.
Instagram’s new warning system represents a shift in Meta’s child safety strategy for now – from passive content restriction to active parental notification. Whether this approach proves protective or problematic will likely depend on how families, regulators and mental health experts respond in the coming months.
