Facebook’s parent company Meta launched new supervision tools and made them available in its new Family Center. The company says it worked closely with experts, parents, guardians and teens to create a place for parents to oversee their teens’ accounts within Meta technologies, set up and use supervision tools, and access resources on how to communicate with their teens about internet use.
This is just the beginning, with Meta saying that in the future Family Center will eventually allow parents and guardians to help their teens manage experiences across Meta technologies, all from one central place.
The education hub
One of the features of the new Family Center is an education hub from where parents and guardians can access resources from experts and review articles, videos and tips on topics like how to talk to teens about social media. Also included are video tutorials on how to use the new supervision tools available on Instagram.
Meta said it has worked closely with groups like Connect Safely and Net Family News to develop these resources, and they will continue to add new information to this section.
Supervision tools on Instagram
Initially available in the US, with plans to roll out globally in the coming months, Supervision tools on Instagram allow parents and guardians to:
- View how much time their teens spend on Instagram and set time limits.
- Be notified when their teen shares they’ve reported someone.
- View and receive updates on what accounts their teens follow and the accounts that follow their teens.
For now, teens will need to initiate supervision in the app on mobile devices, though the plan is to allow parents to do that in June. At that time, teens will need to approve parental supervision if their parent or guardian requests it.
Going forward, Meta will be adding more features, including letting parents set the hours during which their teen can use Instagram and the ability for more than one parent to supervise a teen’s account.
VR parental supervision tools
In addition to Instagram, Meta also announced VR parental supervision tools that will roll out to Quest in the coming months.
As a first step, the company will expand the functionality of its existing unlock pattern on Quest headsets, starting in April. This will allow parents to prevent teens 13+ from accessing experiences they feel aren’t age-appropriate by using an Unlock Pattern to lock access to those apps.
A month later, teens 13+ will be automatically blocked from downloading IARC-rated age-inappropriate apps.
Also, a Parent Dashboard will be launched, offering a suite of supervision tools that will link to the teen’s account based on consent from both sides.
On the record
“The co-design process has clearly shown that teens like to be able to call on their parents for support and guidance, but often don’t know where or how to begin,” said Janice Richardson, International Advisor at Insights SA. “By proposing parental supervision tools across apps, Meta will help overcome this hurdle. Especially since the tools are unobtrusive, respectful of privacy, and offer the ideal training wheels for younger teens building their competence and confidence in the online social environment.”
“Encouraging informed parental engagement in their children’s digital presence is an important way to support young people’s wellness online. Parents can model and mentor the use of these powerful tools for their children, engaging in these spaces alongside their children to provide opportunities for learning,” said Dr. Michael Rich, Director and Founder at Boston Children’s Hospital’s Digital Wellness Lab. “Parents can support and monitor their children’s gradual increase in independence as they demonstrate responsible and safe use, with respect for others and for themselves. By engaging parents as co-learners with their children, we can support their parenting in the digital ecosystem in ways consistent with their parenting in the physical world, setting their children up for long-term physical, mental, and social wellness.”
Our take
While we like what Facebook/Meta is doing with Family Center, we still advise everyone to be careful what he/she shares across their properties — including Facebook and Instagram. Cause, they are always listening as they try to create a digital profile of each one of us and later use that information to serve us “relevant” ads.
One of the tools that will help you prevent Facebook, Google and all other such parties from tracking you down across the Internet is VPN. It can help you appear on the other side of the planet if you want to. Just change the VPN server location and as far as they know, you will appear in a different country to them. So use it whenever you can. And with the best VPNs, you can always do it. That’s how we roll.