Meta measures safeguard teens: Meta introduces additional measures to safeguard teens on its platforms

“We’re announcing an additional step to help protect teens from unwanted contact by turning off their ability to receive DMs from anyone they don’t follow or aren’t connected to on Instagram – including other teens – by default,” the company said in a statement.

Meta said it has developed more than 30 tools and features to help support teens and their parents. Earlier this month, it announced new steps to further limit teens’ ability to see potentially sensitive content on Instagram and Facebook, as well as new nudges to encourage teens to close Instagram at night.

Now, before a teen can change certain Instagram settings they will need approval from their parents through Instagram’s parental supervision tools, Meta said.

Under the new default setting, teens can only be messaged or added to group chats by people they already follow or are connected to. Further, teens in supervised accounts will need to get their parent’s permission to change this setting. This default setting will apply to all teens under the age of 16 (or under 18 in certain countries).

“Those already on Instagram will see a notification at the top of their Feed letting them know we’re making these changes to their message settings. We’re also making these changes to teens’ default settings on Messenger, where under 16s (or under 18 in certain countries) will only receive messages from Facebook friends, or people they’re connected to through phone contacts, for example,” the company said.

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Meta is also planning a new feature to help protect teens from seeing unwanted and inappropriate images from people they’re already connected to, and to discourage them from sending such images themselves. It said it would have more to share on this later this year. Parental supervision on Instagram was launched in March 2022. Now, parents will be prompted to approve or deny their teens’ requests to change their default safety and privacy settings to a less strict state – rather than just being notified of the change.

“For example, if a teen using supervision tries to change their account from private to public, change their Sensitive Content Control from “Less” to “Standard”, or – now – tries to change their DM settings to hear from people they’re not already following or connected to, their parent will receive a notification prompting them to approve or deny the request,” the company said.

“We’re announcing an additional step to help protect teens from unwanted contact by turning off their ability to receive DMs from anyone they don’t follow or aren’t connected to on Instagram – including other teens – by default,” the company said in a statement.

Meta said it has developed more than 30 tools and features to help support teens and their parents. Earlier this month, it announced new steps to further limit teens’ ability to see potentially sensitive content on Instagram and Facebook, as well as new nudges to encourage teens to close Instagram at night.

Now, before a teen can change certain Instagram settings they will need approval from their parents through Instagram’s parental supervision tools, Meta said.

Under the new default setting, teens can only be messaged or added to group chats by people they already follow or are connected to. Further, teens in supervised accounts will need to get their parent’s permission to change this setting. This default setting will apply to all teens under the age of 16 (or under 18 in certain countries).

“Those already on Instagram will see a notification at the top of their Feed letting them know we’re making these changes to their message settings. We’re also making these changes to teens’ default settings on Messenger, where under 16s (or under 18 in certain countries) will only receive messages from Facebook friends, or people they’re connected to through phone contacts, for example,” the company said.

Discover the stories of your interest

Meta is also planning a new feature to help protect teens from seeing unwanted and inappropriate images from people they’re already connected to, and to discourage them from sending such images themselves. It said it would have more to share on this later this year. Parental supervision on Instagram was launched in March 2022. Now, parents will be prompted to approve or deny their teens’ requests to change their default safety and privacy settings to a less strict state – rather than just being notified of the change.

“For example, if a teen using supervision tries to change their account from private to public, change their Sensitive Content Control from “Less” to “Standard”, or – now – tries to change their DM settings to hear from people they’re not already following or connected to, their parent will receive a notification prompting them to approve or deny the request,” the company said.