Meta is rolling out new parental supervision features for Instagram.
Instagram Chief Adam Mosseri in December last year had said that Instagram will be launching its first tools for parents and guardians early this year to help them get more involved in their teen’s experiences on Instagram.
Family Center
It is now making these supervision tools available in its new Family Center, a new place for parents to oversee their teens’ accounts within Meta technologies, set up and use supervision tools, and access resources on how to communicate with their teens about internet use. Supervision tools are being rolled out in the United States with plans to roll out globally in the coming months.
With this, parents and guardians will be able to see how much time their teens spend on Instagram and set time limits. It will also have a new educational hub for parents and guardians.
“Family Center includes a new education hub where parents and guardians can access resources from experts and review helpful articles, videos and tips on topics like how to talk to teens about social media. Parents can also watch video tutorials on how to use the new supervision tools available on Instagram,” Mosseri said in a blog post.
With the new tools, parents will also be notified when their teen shares they’ve reported someone. They will be able to view and receive updates on what accounts their teens follow and the accounts that follow their teens.
“Teens will need to initiate supervision for now in the app on mobile devices, and we will add the option for parents to initiate supervision in the app and on desktop in June. Teens will need to approve parental supervision if their parent or guardian requests it,” Mosseri further explained.
Over the next few months it will add additional features, including letting parents set the hours during which their teen can use Instagram and the ability for more than one parent to supervise a teen’s account.
“This is just one step on a longer path — our vision for Family Center is to eventually allow parents and guardians to help their teens manage experiences across Meta technologies, all from one central place,” Mosseri said.
The social media major will also be rolling out VR parental supervision tools to Quest in the coming months.
“As a first step to giving people more customised control over their VR experience, we’ll expand the functionality of our existing unlock pattern on Quest headsets, starting in April,” Mosseri said.
“This will allow parents to prevent teens 13+ from accessing experiences they feel aren’t age-appropriate by using an Unlock Pattern to lock access to those apps. And in May, we’ll start automatically blocking teens 13+ from downloading IARC rated age-inappropriate apps,” he further added.
It will also launch a Parent Dashboard, hosting a suite of supervision tools that will link to the teen’s account based on consent from both sides.
Published on
March 18, 2022
