"Almost all participants thought that younger users and new users should be defaulted to private"

"Almost all participants thought that younger users and new users should be defaulted to private" "• Almost all participants across ages believed that a young person's account (e.g., anyone below 11-13, and in some cases up to 15) should automatically be private. Several teens said that when they were younger, they had set up their first Instagram account as public only because it was the default and they weren't aware that private was an option. Looking back, they said that private would have been a better option for them. • Many participants also said that all accounts should default to private, for everyone regardless of age. They expressed the perspective that one should have '"practice'" on Instagram before going public, and a specific reason/goal for going public. • Teens who began with a public account, and later switched to private, were very certain that their younger siblings and cousins should start with a private account." "Unwanted contacts were seen as an issue related to safety, security, and privacy" "Malicious people could stalk them and compromise their safety including showing them things they didn't want to see or tracking their location; they could invade their privacy by following them without interacting (just spying/lurking); and could use devious interactions to compromise the security of their accounts, impersonate them, and exploit their personal information." "The biggest pain point and concern related to both public and private accounts was receiving unwanted messages* from the least intimate accounts**. These included • Unwanted messages that were sexual in nature were particularly upsetting •Large group messages from unknown or barely known contacts were frustrating." "Fake robot accounts DM you and say 'watch my free sex videos' and the person sends it to 50 different kinds of people...This was kind of like 'hey get a $500 Visa gift card', I did that one time, it was the first time I ever saw it, I was really young, I thought, 'I am going to get some money!' It asked me for my address, plain old little me, I was kind of ditzy, and what it said to me after that was 'We have your address now, we will stalk you.' I was eleven, I freaked out...That's probably one of the reasons I got a private account." "Bullying was more common for teens on public accounts Most instances of bullying that were shared came from teens with public accounts." "Being bullied created the wish to restrict interaction, but caution about self-remediation, because blocking, unfollowing or switching to private could be interpreted as an act of fear that would draw more bullying in person. Those being bullied needed an assertive way to constrain interaction from bullies that will not be interpreted as fearfulness." "Recommendations • Defaulting all teen accounts to private mode, and explore defaulting all accounts to private mode"