Instagram updates: Quiet Mode, personalization & more

These updates allows users to manage their preferences, set boundaries on the time they spend on the app and supervise the younger audience with updated parental tools.

The recent Instagram updates focuses primarily on teens with the launch of ‘Quiet mode’ and offer new features for managing preferences and parental supervision tools. 

With Quiet Mode, it is encouraging people to set boundaries on the amount of time they spend on the app with friends and followers. Once enabled, users won’t receive any notifications, their profile’s activity status will change to ‘In quiet mode’ and the platform will automatically send an auto-reply when someone DMs them.

Users can easily customize the hours to fit their schedule and once the feature is turned off, they will receive a summary of missed notifications. Anyone can use ‘Quiet mode’, but this is specifically for teens who spend a specific amount of time on Instagram late at night.

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It is currently available to everyone in the US, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Instagram is working on bringing it to more countries soon.

Managing Recommendations

Users can now choose to hide multiple pieces of content in Explore that they aren’t interested in at one time. The platform will avoid showing this kind of content going forward in other places where it makes recommendations, like Reels, Search and more.

Next, users can hide comments and DMs containing specific words. This will apply to recommended posts they might see across Instagram. Adding a word or list of words, emojis or hashtags that they want to avoid – like “fitness” or “recipes”, will allow Instagram to stop recommending content with those words in the caption or the hashtag. Users can access this in the Hidden Words section of Privacy settings.

Updated Parental Supervision Tools

In addition to providing teens with more ways to manage their time and experiences on Instagram, the new updates will help parents be more aware of their teens' choices. 

Parents will now be able to see their teen’s Instagram settings, including privacy and account settings. If their teen updates a setting, parents will receive a notification so they can talk to their teen about the change. Parents can now also view accounts their teen has blocked.