Meta Platforms Adds Features to Instagram School Partnership Program

By Elias Schisgall

Meta Platforms is adding new features to Instagram's School Partnership Program, its latest step to improve the use of its platform by teen users following a landmark $18 billion settlement over online child safety.

Schools participating in the program will now have an Instagram hub for the accounts of their students, Meta said Tuesday. School administrators can use a new "Channels" feature to share updates with students, parents and other followers, as well as post stories and notes visible to students.

Students can verify themselves as part of a school community through the third-party validator UNiDAYS, Meta said. Once verified, they can add school clubs and teams to Instagram, view posts from administrators, browse a student directory, and make a school banner.

Schools also will be able to get priority review for content they report as a possible violation of Instagram's guidelines.

"Following feedback from school administrators, educators and parents about how difficult it is to keep students informed about what's happening across their school communities, we're creating a new, centralized hub for school-related accounts," Meta said. "This will make it easier for schools to reach students, and for students to stay safe and informed on Instagram."

Instagram originally launched the School Partnership Program in March 2025 in collaboration with the International Society for Technology in Education and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. The program has almost 17,000 school partners, Meta said Tuesday.

The company last month agreed to revamp how teenagers can use Facebook and Instagram as part of an $18 billion settlement with 48 state attorneys general. That settlement resolved a trial in which four states accused Meta of violating consumer protection and child safety laws by knowingly targeting young users and making their platforms addictive.

Meta agreed to set a default two-hour time limit for underage users and implement a "school mode" for muted notifications during school as part of the settlement. It also now blocks teen users from seeing the number of likes and reactions on posts and allows users or their parents to turn off Instagram's algorithmic recommendations.

Write to Elias Schisgall at elias.schisgall@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 29, 2026 12:35 ET (16:35 GMT)