Instagram Now Lets You Control Your Bully's Comments

Blocking a bully on social media doesn't always bring an end to online abuse. And in some cases, it can make face-to-face interactions with the bully even worse.

That's what Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, said he found out when he started talking to teenagers about their experiences with bullying on the platform.

"Most of it seems to happen between people who know each other in real life ... and teenagers are often reluctant to report or block their peers who bully them online," Mosseri said in an interview last month with NPR's Audie Cornish. "The controls that we had before were insufficient."

That's why this week Instagram announced a new anti-bullying feature called Restrict.

Teenagers told Mosseri and other Instagram researchers that they often didn't block bullies on the platform for two reasons. First, blocking a bully — something that the bully is aware of — can actually escalate the situation and result in more abuse on the platform