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By Gavin Boyle
Instagram announced the launch of its newest feature, “Instants,” which allows users to send each other photos that are short-lived and disappear after being viewed.
“Instagram is launching Instants, a new way to share in the moments – with spontaneous, unfiltered photos – with friends,” the platform explained in an announcement. “Instants are ephemeral to viewers, but are saved in your archive for up to a year and can be reshared as a recap to Stories.”
“Friends can react and reply, with replies going straight to DMs,” the announcement continued. “There’s also an Instants companion app for quicker camera access. Full Teen Accounts and Family Center protections apply, including shared time limits, Sleep Mode, and parental supervision.”
The goal of the feature is to quickly connect users and allow them to send out photos, which is why they are unable to edit the pictures they take. Meanwhile, Instagram is testing out a standalone Instants app to make the experience even quicker and more streamlined.
While Instagram is touting the feature as something completely new, in reality, it seems to operate similarly to Snapchat with the ability to quickly send photos to others, and the stipulation that the photos are deleted 24 hours after they are sent, or immediately after they are viewed by the other person.
The similarity to Snapchat, unfortunately, is not a complement. Snapchat has long served as a platform where users share sexual content and are groomed into abuse. In October of 2024, for example, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued the platform for enabling sexual abuse and the trafficking of children, drugs and guns.
“Our undercover investigation revealed that Snapchat’s harmful design features create an environment where predators can easily target children through sextortion schemes and other forms of sexual abuse,” Torrez said.
“Snap has misled users into believing that photos and videos sent on their platform will disappear, but predators can permanently capture this content and they have created a virtual yearbook of child sexual images that are traded, sold, and stored indefinitely,” he continued. “Through our litigation against…Snap, the New Mexico Department of Justice will continue to hold these platforms accountable for prioritizing profits over children’s safety.”
While Instagram claims that its child safety protocols will be imposed upon Instants, it is unclear how much of a difference this will actually make, especially if the feature becomes popular. Even for a company as large as Meta, it could be extremely difficult to moderate potentially billions of photo exchanges every day, and the company may not even attempt to do so as users already need to know the person they are sending an Instant to, which Meta may claim is all the safety users need.
While introducing Instants is interesting, parents should be careful about how they let their children use the new feature and understand that it likely poses the same risks as using an app like Snapchat would given how similar the experiences are.
Read Next: What You Need to Know About the Snapchat Feature Keeping Your Kid Hooked
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