A 2022 guide to being safe on Instagram 

As a platform that is keenly tuned in to people’s creativities and expression, Instagram keeps updating its safety features to make it an all-inclusive and safe experience for everyone.

Understanding that online safety is important to people, Instagram has launched a host of new features which will enable a positive experience for all.

Here’s a look at them: 

‘Take A Break’: To make informed decisions about how you’re spending your time on Instagram, enable the ‘Take a Break’ feature which allows you to pause your usage after a set time. You can also set reminders to take more breaks in the future.  Instagram also shows expert-backed tips to help reflect and reset. To inform teens about this feature, Instagram shows notifications suggesting people to turn on these reminders.

Limits: This feature automatically hides comments and DM requests from people who don’t follow you, or only recently started following you. Limits will allow you to hear more from your long-standing followers while limiting contact from people who might only be coming to your account to target you. You can easily turn this feature on by going to your privacy settings. 

Control Comments: Instagram has built filters that automatically remove offensive words and phrases and bullying comments. You can also create your own list of words or emojis that you don’t want to see in the comments section. You can enable this by going to “Filters” in the Comment Controls section. Additionally, you can choose who you want to allow to comment on your posts or you can block commenters.

Hidden Words: Instagram has rolled out a Hidden Words feature that allows you to filter abusive DM requests that are likely to be "spammy or low-quality”. It also lets you automatically filter offensive words, phrases, and emojis into a hidden folder. 

Sensitive Content Control: In order to avoid posts that might be upsetting, Instagram limits the visibility of certain posts that have been flagged by the community for containing sensitive content. The setting was launched to reduce hate speech, bullying, and harmful content on the platform.

Restrict: You can restrict someone by swiping left on a comment through the Privacy tab in Settings, or directly on the profile of the account you intend to restrict. Once the Restrict feature is enabled, comments on your posts from a person you have restricted will only be visible to that person. You can choose to view the comment by tapping “See Comment”; approve the comment so everyone can see it; delete it, or ignore it. You won’t receive any notifications for comments from a restricted account.

Manage Like Counts – In order to give control to you on your Instagram experience, Instagram has given the option to hide like counts on all the posts you see in your feed—and you can do this by visiting the new Posts section in Settings. You’ll also have the option to hide like counts on your own posts, so others can’t see how many likes your posts get, and you can do this on a post-by-post basis. 

Pinned Comments - In addition to removing negative comments, Instagram wanted to give people an easy way to amplify and encourage positive interactions. Pinned Comments gives you a way to set the tone for your account, and engage with their community by pinning a select number of comments to the top of your comments thread. 

Support Requests - Our community now has access to Support Requests—a place where you can stay current on reports filed and follow updates on any violations by your account.  This is aimed at increasing transparency into our processes by ensuring that everyone has access to viewing their reports and violations. This also provides people a dedicated place to appeal decisions they disagree with in an effort to ensure that our processes are fair. 

Block and Multiblock - You can block accounts you don’t want to interact with. This will block people from seeing and commenting on their posts, Stories, Reels, and Live broadcasts. Instagram does not tell people when they’ve been blocked, or who has blocked them, and you can unblock an account at any time. Instagram also recently announced an update to its blocking feature, to make it harder for someone who you’ve already blocked from contacting you again through a new account:  Now, whenever you decide to block someone on Instagram, you’ll have the option to both block their account and preemptively block new accounts that person may create.

Hope this helps you have a better experience while using Instagram!

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