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Meta underscores safety measures for teens and parents on ‘Safer Internet Day’
Today, Meta marks Safer Internet Day by bringing to light its suite of tools and updates to improve safety and experiences for both teens and parents using Meta’s platforms. To help young people foster online relationships in a safe environment, Meta collaborates with experts in mental health, child psychology, digital literacy and others to ensure safer experiences across its family of apps.
Setting safe boundaries for teens
In the past year alone, Meta has introduced several updates which include defaulting teens into more private settings at sign up and protecting them from unwanted interactions with adults who don’t follow them. This extends to protecting teens from receiving messages from suspicious adults they aren’t connected to or seeing them in People You May Know recommendations. Meta is also removing content that violates the platform’s policies and making potentially sensitive content more difficult to find.
Teens are encouraged to report unsafe or suspicious activities, such as reporting accounts after blocking them and learning how to navigate inappropriate messages from adults. Along with default privacy settings, teens can take safety further by choosing who can see their friends list; the people, Pages and lists they follow; posts they are tagged in on their profiles and more.
Tips for teens on Instagram:- Build positive online habits with features like 'Take a Break' - spend more meaningful time online using features like 'Take a Break' and ‘Nudges’ that encourage you to both spend time away from Instagram and explore different topics while on Instagram.
- Set your boundaries with friends online via ‘Quiet Mode’ - a new feature intended to help people focus, manage their nighttime use and set healthier boundaries between friends and followers. Quiet mode is available to everyone in the US, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and will be launched in more countries soon.
- Control what you see on Explore in settings - you can now choose to hide multiple pieces of content in Explore that they are not interested in.
- Prevent potentially offensive comments with ‘Hidden words’ - a tool which, when turned on, will automatically filter DM requests containing offensive words, phrases and emojis, so you never have to see them.
- Protect your account and turn on two-factor authentication - one of the most important things you can do to protect your account is turn on two-factor authentication.
Supporting parents and guardians