Facebook owner launches new features to support teens in social media time management

On Tuesday, Meta announced new features to support teens and families to make it easier to manage the time they spend on Instagram and Facebook, including parental controls and alerts.

The technology statement notes that “these innovations on Instagram and Facebook come after the success of recent launches such as Take a Break, Instagram’s Parental Supervision Tools and Silent Mode, which launched earlier this year.”

Now, new features that will be available in a few weeks include “new Instagram parental controls” where parents have the ability to see how many mutual friends their teen has with their followers and accounts. followed by “new alerts to help teens manage their time on Facebook and Instagram.”

This includes “a notification if they spend more than 20 minutes on Facebook prompting them to take a break from the app and set daily limits” and an “Instagram warning prompting them to disable the app if they watch ‘drums’ after a night”.

Another feature is Silent Mode, “which is designed to help teens focus and set healthy boundaries with friends and followers,” and which “will be available globally in the coming weeks after its initial launch in select countries earlier in the year.”

It 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 you can only send other message requests after the user accepts the request to talk in ‘chat'” reads this if not reported.

“These message requests will be limited to text only, which means people will only be able to send images and videos to someone who isn’t following them, once the recipient accepts the request to talk in ‘chat'”, which means people will stop receiving unwanted images or videos from people they don’t follow.