Instagram announces new teen safety features ahead of Senate hearing

On Wednesday, Instagram head, Adam Mosseri will testify before the Senate for the first time on how the app is impacting teenagers’ mental health. This hearing is happening following the recent testimonies from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. In her testimony, she has said that the company cares about its profits more than user safety. Just a day before the hearing the company announced that it’ll be introducing parental control features in its platform from march next year.

Parental control features will allow parents to see how much time their teenagers spend on the platform. They will also be able to set time limits and be notified if their teenager reports someone. Instagram has been facing pressure to shield its young users from harmful content and stop them from overusing the app. The new feature is a part of a new package to solve those issues: make the platform safer for its young users.

Instagram announces Parental control features

New Safety and Well-being Features ??

Excited to announce these new tools to help our community feel even more supported while on Instagram:

– Take a Break
– Parental Controls
– Your Activity

Check out our new blog post to learn more ??https://t.co/lxcknnQNf1 pic.twitter.com/QLdlFD8VT3

— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) December 7, 2021

Adman Mosseri introduced the new features through a company blog post. Although Mosseri claims in the post that these features have been in development for a “long time” But the announcement came just before the Senate hearing. From March, a primary version of the parental control will be available and more features will be added in the future: enabling parents to monitor their children more carefully. “This is the first version of these tools; we’ll continue to add more options over time,” Adam Mosseri said in the post.

But the parental control feature will be optional. Teens can choose not to send alerts to their parents. And there is no requirement that teens and parents will have to use the parental control feature. The feature is still very weak compared to its rivals. Like TikTok, Which allows parents to restrict and monitor their children’s accounts even more. Also, such features already exist in both ios and android operating systems. So experts think the new change won’t be much helpful.

Lawmakers weren’t appeased by Instagram’s sudden decisions. “Meta is attempting to shift attention from their mistakes by rolling out parental guides, use timers and content control features that consumers should have had all along,” said Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee. “But my colleagues and I see right through what they are doing.”

Mosseri also mentioned in his post that they have been also working on other tweaks for Instagram. Its users will no longer be able to tag or mention teenagers who don’t follow them. The app is also releasing a feature for all its users in January that will allow them to delete their posts, comments, and likes in bulk.

Alongside the parental control feature, Instagram has been developing an educational hub to offer parents and guardians tips on safe social media usage. Also, Instagram started to roll out its “take a break” feature from last month. This opt-in feature allows users to step away from the app after a certain time. The feature is already available in the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, and will launch globally from next year.