Teens under 16 will need permission to livestream on Instagram: Meta

• Those policies, announced in September, meant all teenage users were automatically placed under teen accounts — and those under 16 needed a parent's permission to change their settings.
• Since making those changes, Meta said in a Tuesday release, 97% of teens aged 13 to 15 have kept the built-in restrictions.

Driving the news: On top of the new automatic Instagram Live restrictions, teens under 16 will also have to get permission from a parent to turn off a feature that blurs images with suspected nudity in direct messages.

• These updates will be available "in the next couple of months," per Meta's announcement.

Zoom out: Additionally, Meta announced it will begin introducing teen accounts to Facebook and Messenger beginning Tuesday.

• Those accounts will offer similar built-in protections against inappropriate content.

By the numbers: There are at least 54 million users with teen accounts, Meta said.

State of play: Meta's swath of changes announced last September included new verification methods to prevent users from lying about their age to circumvent protections, Axios' Sara Fischer reported.

• Teen accounts were automatically made private, and stricter message settings were implemented to filter out offensive content and unwanted contact from non-followers.

• The changes also gave parents more visibility over how their teens were using Instagram, such as through tools to see who their child had been messaging.

The big picture: Researchers have identified substantial links between social media use and increased depression among teens.

• Former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called on Congress last year to require platforms to display warning labels alerting users of the potential harms posed to teens' mental health.
• Meta's changes also come as states and other countries have imposed their age restrictions to limit social media use.

Go deeper: Teens spent a quarter of the school day on their phones: study