Hoping to avoid the child-wellbeing controversies that have dogged Instagram, Meta will roll out several features meant to increase safety for pre-teens in its virtual-reality realm. In addition, it will add to existing ones on Instagram, intending to tamp down on the debate about the app’s effects on kids.
Through the software controlling Meta’s Quest VR headset, parents will be able to approve or deny purchases, block apps, view the apps a teen user owns and receive notifications about any purchases. The parental controls, which activate only when a teen has linked an account to a parent’s, also allow parents to view a child’s screentime, see who the child has added as a friend and block content from a PC to the VR headset.
“We're adding in more in-app interventions to encourage teens to have more positive experiences online with a diversity of content,” says Vaishnavi J, Meta’s head of youth wellbeing. “And to also just be more mindful about the time that they're spending online.”
Meta has come under fire from politicians recently for how it handles young people. Most prominently, lawmakers have criticized the lack of safeguards around Instagram, citing internal research from Meta released by a whistleblower that shows the company’s own concerns about teen use and mental health while using the app. Meta has responded by releasing new safety tools and attempting to discredit the leaked research.
The company has several new measures meant to bolster child safety. On Instagram, parents will now be able to set times during the week to limit the app’s use and view the information around any post a child reports. Plus, Instagram will begin sending so-called “nudges” to teen users, notifications meant to curb time spent on one topic—potentially a harmful one—and migrate to another. It will even do this if a teen user spends too much time with one genre of Reels, the short-form videos Instagram has centered its app around, eager to seize back popularity and viewership from TikTok.
