Meta is giving more control to parents over their children’s activities on Facebook and Instagram

• Meta has announced new parental supervision tools for Facebook and Instagram.
• The tools have been made available as part of the Meta Family Center.
• These tools will allow parents to keep a better track of their children’s online usage.

The increase in internet usage has resulted in children being exposed to a lot of content that is not suitable for them. It has also become increasingly difficult to control how much time children spend on social media platforms.

Mark Zuckerberg-run Meta now has a solution for this. The technology major has announced new parental supervision tools that will offer parents more control over their children’s social media usage on Facebook and Instagram, and allow them to track their online activities.

The tools – available as part of the Meta Family Center – allows parents to view how their children use Messenger, including their contact list and who can message them. Instagram, on the other hand, has updated its message feature to protect children from being approached by strangers while Facebook will help teenagers temper their online presence.

Meta has started rolling out these features in the US, UK and Canada. Other countries, including India will receive these features in the coming months.

Supervision tools for Messenger

To begin with, parents get access to new supervision tools, allowing them to better manage their child’s online usage.

Parents will now be able to use the family centre to view how much time their children are spending on Messenger and get updates about their contact list and privacy and safety settings.

This will also allow parents to view who can message their child and who can see their stories. If any changes are made to these settings, the parent will be notified.

Additionally, if a child reports a person on the platform, they will get an option to inform their parent about it.

New privacy features for Instagram

To prevent strangers from contacting children, Instagram has revamped its message request feature. Users who wish to message a person not following them will have to send an invite to connect with them and this invite can only be sent to one person at a time.

The invite can only include a text message, thus limiting the possibility of a stranger sending obscene content using images, videos or voice notes.

In addition, when a child blocks someone, she will get an option to add her parent to supervise her account to get additional support.

Parents will also be able to identify strangers their children are interacting with by finding out how many accounts their children have in common with the people they are following, or are being followed by.

Time management on Facebook

Facebook will soon start sending a notification to teenagers if they have spent 20 minutes on the app, prompting them to take time off from the platform. It will also allow users to customise their own time limits.

Similarly, teenagers who scroll reels at night will get a notification to close the app.

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