Meta today announced new features to support teens and families to make it easier to manage the time they spend on Instagram and Facebook, which includes parental supervision tools and alerts.
In a statement, the technology company points out that “these novelties in the Instagram and Facebook follow the success of recent launches such as Take a Break, Parental Supervision Tools on Instagram and Silent Mode, launching earlier this year.”
Now the new features, which will be available in weeks, include “new parental supervision tools on Instagram”, where there is the possibility for parents to be able to see how many mutual friends their teenager has with their followers and with the accounts that this follows, and “new alerts to help teens manage their time on Facebook and Instagram”.
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This includes “a notification if they spend more than 20 minutes on Facebook, encouraging them to take a break from the app and set daily limits"and "an alert on Instagram that suggests turning off the app if they are watching 'reels' in a row at night".
Another of the features is the silent mode, “which is designed to help teens focus and establish healthy boundaries with friends and followers” and which “will be available globally in the coming weeks, after initially being launched in some countries at the beginning of the year".
Also adds "new restrictions to protect people from unwanted direct message requests".
From now on, “you can only send a direct message request to someone you don't follow — and it will only be possible to send other message requests once the user accepts the request to speak in 'chat'“, reads the statement.
"These message requests will be limited to text only, meaning that people will only be able to send images and videos to someone who doesn't follow them after the recipient accepts the request to speak in 'chat'“, which means people will no longer receive unsolicited images or videos from people they don't follow.
