Meta has announced several changes to Instagram that are designed to keep teen users safer on the platform. New features include the ability to limit who can tag or mention teens, nudges to other topics for those dwelling on a single issue, and Take A Break, which is coming to the U.S., UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand today but all users will be able to use it early next year.
In addition to the above new features, parents and guardians will get new tools next March to help guide and support their children on Instagram. Parents will be able to view how long their kids are on Instagram and to set time limits. Teens can also enable notification to parents and guardians when they block someone on Instagram, allowing them an opportunity to discuss the block at a later time. Meta says the list of tools will continue to grow in the future.
A new educational hub containing additional resources for parents, including product tutorials and tips from experts, will also be made available.
Take A Break which is coming to users in a handful of countries at first. The feature allows kids to set a reminder to take a break every 30 minutes, 20 minutes, or 10 minutes. A pop-up screen will appear advising the user to take a break when their allotted time expires.
Other changes on the way include:
- Preventing people from tagging or mentioning teens that don’t follow them.
- Recommendations to teens in Search, Explore, Hashtags, and Suggested Accounts will be stricter.
- Instagram will start nudging teens towards different topics if they’ve been dwelling on one topic for quite a while.
Last but not least, Instagram will offer a new tool in January to allow users will have the options to bulk delete content they’ve posted before including photos and vices as well as previous likes and comments.
(Via Neowin)
