New school year, new class schedule, new group chat, and for a lot of teens, a fresh wave of interest in their social accounts. New classmates look people up. Old classmates reconnect. Accounts that sat quiet all summer suddenly get more visitors, and more visibility means it’s worth knowing exactly who can see what.
This isn’t about locking a teenager off the internet before the first bell rings. It’s a fifteen-minute check to make sure the accounts they’re already using are set up in a way that matches how they actually want to be seen, by who.
Start with who can find the account at all
Before worrying about individual posts, check the basics: is the account public or private, and can anyone request to follow?
Set the account to private. On both Instagram and TikTok, a private account means new followers have to be approved, and people who aren’t approved followers can’t see posts, stories, or (on TikTok) most videos. This is the single biggest lever for controlling audience, and it’s worth confirming every school year, since app updates occasionally reset settings or add new ones.
Review who can send a follow request or message. Both apps let you narrow this down, for example limiting direct messages to people you already follow, or people in your contacts. A stranger with no mutual friends showing up in a teen’s DMs is a common enough pattern that it’s worth closing that door by default.
Check the follower list itself. A private account is only as private as the people already following it. If there’s a habit of accepting every follow request to seem popular, that’s worth a conversation. It’s fine to say no to people you don’t actually know.
Look at what strangers can see before they even follow
Even a private account leaks some information publicly, and it’s worth knowing what that is.
- Profile photo and bio. These are visible to anyone, private account or not. A bio that lists a school name, sports team, or hometown gives away more than most teens realize.
- Instagram’s “mutual friends” and suggested accounts. These can hint at real-life networks and locations even without a name or address attached.
- TikTok’s “Suggested Accounts” and friend-of-friend visibility. Worth reviewing in settings, since it affects how easily someone new can connect the dots between accounts.
If a bio currently reads like a resume, that’s a good moment to trim it down to something less identifying.
Turn off exact location sharing
Neither app needs to know exactly where a post was taken, and neither needs a live location shared with followers.
Turn off precise location for the app in your phone’s system settings, not just the app’s own settings. Most social apps only need approximate location, if any location at all, to function normally.
Double check story and post location tags. Tagging a location after leaving somewhere is generally safer than tagging it in real time, since a live tag can tell people where someone currently is.
Remember that photos carry hidden location data too. A photo taken on a phone often stores GPS coordinates in its file even if the caption says nothing about where it was taken. For a closer look at how that works and how to strip it out before sharing, see How to Remove Metadata from Photos: Protect Your Location Privacy from Hidden EXIF Data. For the broader picture of how apps track movement beyond just photos, Protecting Your Privacy From Location Tracking covers it in more depth.
Check comments, tags, and who can add you to things
A locked-down profile doesn’t help much if anyone can still tag you, mention you, or drop a comment that shows up to a wide audience.
Set tagging to “manual approval.” Both platforms let you review a tag before it appears on your profile, which stops someone from tagging you into a group photo, an old video, or something you’d rather not be associated with.
Filter or restrict comments. Instagram and TikTok both offer keyword filters and the option to limit who can comment at all. For a teen who’s had trouble with unwanted comments, this is worth setting up before the first week of school, not after.
Turn off “Duet” and “Stitch” on TikTok if you don’t want your videos remixed. These features let other users build on your content, which is fun in the right context and unwelcome in the wrong one.
Think about the group chats that come with the new school year
A lot of the social pressure around the start of school doesn’t happen on the main app, it happens in class group chats, some run by the school and some set up independently by students. These chats often pull in a wider circle of people than a teen would normally follow or friend, and they can move fast. It’s worth understanding how these chats typically work and what to watch for, covered in New School Year, New Group Chats: What Parents Should Know About Class Chat Apps.
Secure the account itself, not just the privacy settings
Privacy settings control who sees content. Account security controls who can log in and change any of it.
- Turn on two-factor authentication for both Instagram and TikTok. This means a stolen password alone isn’t enough to get into the account. It’s a small setup step that closes off one of the most common ways teen accounts get taken over. Why Two-Factor Authentication Isn’t Optional Anymore explains why this one setting carries so much weight.
- Use a unique password, not one shared with email, gaming accounts, or anything else. A breach on one site shouldn’t mean a break-in everywhere.
- Check “logged in devices” in account settings occasionally, especially if a phone was recently upgraded or shared with a friend. If you’re setting up a new phone this school year, How to Set Up a New Smartphone Safely, Step by Step is a good companion checklist, and Multi-Device Security covers keeping accounts consistent across a phone, tablet, and laptop.
A word on what already exists online
New classmates and new teachers doing a casual search will find whatever’s already public, not just what’s posted going forward. Old posts, tagged photos, and comments from a couple of years ago don’t disappear on their own. It’s worth a quick look through an account’s history, particularly anything public, to see whether it still reflects how a teen wants to show up this year. Online Reputation Management has a fuller walkthrough of cleaning up an old digital footprint if that turns up more than expected.
None of this is about hiding. It’s about a teen deciding who gets a front-row seat to their life online, rather than leaving that decision to default settings written for the widest possible audience. Fifteen minutes before the first day of school is a reasonable trade for that.
A quick safety note
This article is general information, not professional security, legal, or medical advice. No single tool or setting makes anyone completely safe; security works in layers. If you are dealing with a live incident, such as active fraud, ransomware, or a child in danger, contact the appropriate professionals or authorities. For a threat to a child, report it to the NCMEC CyberTipline at report.cybertip.org and to local law enforcement.
