Meta has announced new parental controls for Instagram and
Messenger that will provide parents with more insights into how their children and
teenagers socially engage and spend time on the apps.
The parental control update on Messenger will let parents
know exactly the time duration a child is spending on Messenger. From the Meta
Family Center, parents will also be able to take a look at their child’s
Messenger contacts list, along with monitoring their privacy and safety
settings. Moreover, if a child reports someone on the app, parents will be
informed of it, as well as be able to see who can and can’t message their child.
Similar parental control updates have been launched on Instagram.
The new features will inform parents about who follows their teenager on Instagram
and how well the teen user knows the people they’re following. There is also a
new way to see how many friends a teenager has in common with their followers
and people they are following. As a result, parents would be able to identify
if their teen is in contact with strangers. Additionally, teens will get to choose
if their parents get a notification of when they block an account.
Apart from parental control tools, Meta is also experimenting
with a new messaging privacy feature on Instagram for all users. This includes
making it compulsory for people who message a user that they don’t follow, to
ask for their permission before attempting to contact them.
