Instagram Rolls Out New Safety Measures to Combat Sextortion Scams Targeting Teens

Instagram has announced a suite of new safety features aimed at shielding teens from sextortion scams, a growing threat on social media. These scams often involve criminals coercing young users to share intimate images under threat of public exposure. To counteract this, Instagram will now prevent users from screenshotting or screen-recording disappearing photos and videos sent in private messages.

Instagram’s additional protections for teens include stricter privacy settings by default, limiting who can contact them. The platform will use signals such as account age to identify suspicious profiles attempting to interact with teens. Such requests will be either blocked or routed to spam, and accounts flagged as “scammy” will lose access to the follower and following lists of teens to prevent exploitation.

The platform is also launching a global “nudity protection” feature that automatically blurs potentially explicit images in DMs, which is enabled by default for teen users. For added support, Instagram has partnered with Crisis Text Line in the U.S., allowing users facing sextortion threats to connect with a crisis counselor directly from the app.

To raise awareness, Instagram is working with organizations like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and influencers to educate teens and parents about spotting and handling sextortion attempts. These measures come amid a push to enhance safety features across Meta’s platforms and address criticisms around teen safety in social media environments.