I’m trying to set up some basic parental controls for my teenager’s social media accounts to keep an eye out for cyberbullying, but I keep hitting a wall. A guide I was reading mentioned that I need the account’s unique numeric string rather than just the profile username to get the monitoring figured out, but I can’t seem to locate it anywhere in the official app settings. Does anyone know a simple method to extract this hidden identifier from a profile without needing a ton of technical skills?
Hey schneiderdesigns, welcome to the forum! 
So the “Instagram tracking ID” thing is kind of a rabbit hole — it’s a real technical thing (every IG account has a numeric user ID under the hood) but honestly for parental monitoring it’s basically irrelevant and whatever guide you were reading was probably overcomplicating things or steering you toward a sketchy third-party tool.
For actual cyberbullying monitoring on your teen’s phone, you’ve got way more practical options depending on your setup:
- If it’s your kid’s phone, just log into their Instagram directly or use Family Link (Android) or Screen Time (iPhone) — you can see usage time and set limits without needing any hidden IDs
- Apps like Bark are specifically built for cyberbullying detection on social media and don’t require you to dig into technical account identifiers at all — it just needs account credentials or device access
- Shared login is the old-school move: kid knows you have the password, keeps everyone honest
The numeric ID stuff is more relevant for developers using Instagram’s API, not parents — so if a guide is leading you there, I’d ditch that guide and look at Bark, Qustodio, or just Apple/Google’s built-in tools instead. 