Instagram is rolling out new tools parents can use to help monitor and limit their children’s use of the photo-sharing app, months after disclosures by a Facebook whistleblower raised concerns about the platform’s impact on younger users. .
The tools, released Wednesday, give parents the ability to see how much time their children spend on Instagram and set limits on their usage, as well as visibility into accounts they follow or are followed.
Options are currently available to parents in the United States, with plans to roll out globally in the coming months.
The new options were announced in a blog post by Instagram boss Adam Mosseri late last year, along with some features that were released at the time aimed squarely at teen users, such as encouraging users to pause the app after a certain amount. of predetermined time.
Last year, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked hundreds of internal documents, including some that showed the company was aware of the ways in which Instagram can harm mental health and body image, particularly among teenagers.
Lawmakers interrogated Facebook and Instagram executives at hearings about these and other details of the documents, and Instagram halted a plan to launch a version of Instagram for children under 13.
In a blog post on Wednesday, Mosseri wrote that the new tools also include the ability for parents and guardians to receive a notification when their teen shares that they reported a person within the app.
In the coming months, parents will be able to do things like determine specific times of day when their teen can use the app.
For now, Mosseri wrote, teens will have to start the Instagram supervision process on their smartphone or tablet.
Adults will be able to apply for teen account supervision through the mobile app or website starting in June, though teens still need to approve the request before it is granted.
The tools are part of an online “Family Center” that Instagram’s parent company Meta is building with the aim of eventually having a place where parents can supervise how their children use Meta’s various apps and technologies.
New parental controls are coming to Meta’s headsets and VR platform as well. In a post on the Oculus blog, the company said that parents will soon be able to block access to apps they don’t want their kids to use (a special unlock pattern will be required to open the app).
In the coming months, parents will also be able to see through the Oculus app how much time their teen is using VR.
Like Facebook and Instagram, the Quest headphones are aimed at users aged 13 and up, but the relative newness of the medium as a popular technology — which many parents and children are just beginning to navigate — means that parental controls established may be absent or difficult to find.
Samantha Kelly contributed to this story.
Source: CNN Brasil
I am Sophia william, author of World Stock Market. I have a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and I have worked as a reporter for several news websites. I have a passion for writing and informing people about the latest news and events happening in the world. I strive to be accurate and unbiased in my reporting, and I hope to provide readers with valuable information that they can use to make informed decisions.
