Kids hide images on their phones in several ways and for many reasons. Some just don’t want all of their embarrassing goofy pictures with their friends to be shared. Sometimes there’s a more sinister reason. Something involving sexting or cyberbullying. Kids can use different kinds of apps to lock away photos. There are some that look like calculators or phone utilities apps and still some that don’t hide what they do. Now, Instagram is allowing posts to be saved within the app without being made public. It’s called Archive.
Instagram’s new archive feature allows users to remove posts from their feed without deleting them. It allows you to put the photos in an archive to be looked at in the future and even reposted. If you do repost it falls back in its original chronological order so it kind of just magically reappears where it was originally. A little arrow clock icon in the upper right corner of your profile page in the Instagram app will give you access to your archived posts. You can fill the archives by tapping on the “…” in the upper right of a post. Then just tap “Archive.”
Why would you want to archive photos? Well, some may decide later that their post wasn’t something they’d want everyone to see. Maybe the pictures from the party you attended last month wouldn’t look good to that employer you just applied for a job with. No problem, just archive those things and you can still see them without them being public. Maybe you broke up with that guy or girl and don’t want everyone to see you together all over your Instagram page. Well, just archive them and they become a private photo stash for you to weep over on your own. Your kids will even use the feature to hide posts that didn’t get as many likes as they want.
What Parents Should Know
I recommend you understand the Archive feature on Instagram and learn how to find it on your kids’ profile. If you often take your kids’ phone and look at their social media behavior this is a way for them to share a photo for a brief time and then save it to an archive, knowing you’ll be looking at their feed later. If you don’t know how to access the Archived photos it’s possible you can miss some of what they’ve been posting. “Finstagram” or Spam accounts are popular with teens because it’s a way to have a more private collection of photos that they don’t share with many people. I recommend you find out if your kid has a spam account and follow it. I now, recommend you check to see what photos they’ve archived as well.