Instagram improves it’s safety features

It’s a blessing and a curse, the speed at which the digital world moves.

On the one hand, it’s amazing what the technology will help us to do next, but on the other, it makes it harder to keep up with what’s going on and it’s especially hard to keep up with which app your young ones are into this week.

Online safety is reassuringly a topic of conversation more and more often with the social media platforms these days and with good reason. So it’s good to see Instagram focusing on some new features to allow us to feel a little bit safer online.

The first very welcome major change is the ability to remove followers. There are unfortunately those on the internet that have nothing better to do but bully, troll and generally be negative. Previously there was not much you could do about that if one decided the were going to follow you on Instagram. But now, if you have a private account you can select and remove followers and they will not be notified.

Second major change is the ability to turn off comments on specific posts. It’s within Advanced Settings for each individual post and appears at the bottom prior to hitting send, underneath all the channels you can also post to. You can swipe the toggle button across and turn off comments for just that post so no troll even has a chance to get at you.

The third major change is the introduction of comment liking – not so much a safety feature, but a chance for us all to start being a bit more positive on the platform.

We are also happy to hear that Instagram has built in the ability to report Self Injury posts. There will be an anonymous way to report any posts where you feel that the user may be struggling and in need of support.

Well done Instagram we say! Well done.