[ad_1]
Tech giant Meta has just announced it will be imposing stricter message settings for minors on Instagram and Facebook. In a recent news post on its site, Meta talked about teen safety on its social media platforms. The new changes will promise to not only protect teens but also allow guardians more control. Unsolicited contact with minors on social media has been a societal plague for years. These new restrictions aim to combat this social contagion, as well as giving parents greater peace of mind.
Meta’s proposed changes to messaging minors
The company announced that it was planning to implement various different restrictions on its apps. For starters, Meta made changes to Instagram and Facebook earlier this month. These changes will help protect teens from encountering sensitive media on both platforms. Till now, anyone aged 19 or up has been unable to message a minor, period. This, of course, is only restricted to people said minor doesn’t follow. The limit is part of a larger change recently which included limiting strangers from messaging a user more than one message, or anything not text-based.
Now, teens on Instagram and Facebook have the option to turn off messages from strangers completely. This setting also includes other teens and will be on by default for minors. Going forward, only people a minor is connected to will be able to message them or add them to groups. This protection also extends to Facebook’s Messenger app, which will only allow messages from contacts or people a minor follows on Facebook. Meta says another feature is also in the works that will protect teens from seeing sensitive content from people they do follow. It wouldn’t be a bad bet to say this upcoming feature is likely to make use of AI.
Changes to parental supervision tools
In addition to message settings, Meta is also giving more control over supervised accounts. Parents and legal guardians will now have the option to approve or deny changes to their teen’s account settings. Before this, Instagram would only notify supervisors of changes to an account. Settings that will now require approval from guardians include the messaging restrictions mentioned above. Meta says these restrictions will apply to teens aged under 16, and under 18 in “certain countries”.
Parents and legal guardians will find it much easier to manage their teen’s social media exposure going forward. These proposed tools, restrictions, and features should hopefully see a significant reduction in inappropriate conduct with minors. Furthermore, these tools are more likely to entice strict parents to let their teens use Meta’s social media apps over other platforms.
[ad_2]
Source link