What’s changing for teens on Instagram and Facebook

ByTech Word News

Meta said Wednesday it will change the way teenagers use Instagram and Facebook as part of a landmark settlement with 47 states, the District of Columbia and US territories over claims of social media addiction.

Instagram and Facebook currently allow anyone over the age of 13 to open accounts. Users under the age of 18 are automatically redirected to teen accounts, which are set to private by default and restrict certain types of harmful content.

The settlement is expected to further change applications. Meta said the new features will roll out over the next six months, while other changes, such as how the company verifies users’ ages, could take up to a year. Last year, Meta already started implementing some of the changes mentioned in the settlement.

Here’s what to expect.

Teenagers will be limited to just two hours a day on Instagram and Facebook unless a parent goes into their settings and gives permission for more time. Young users will also be automatically restricted from using apps overnight, between midnight and 6am

In addition, notifications on Instagram and Facebook will be muted during classes from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m

For the first time, young users will be able to turn off “autoplay,” a feature that automatically plays content while the user is watching it. Instead, they can choose to tap or swipe to view another photo or video in the app. Until now, users did not have the option to turn off this feature.

Teens also get the option to turn off the settings that give them an algorithmic personalized feed. Instead, they can choose to be shown content that they are personally uncomfortable with. This is another option that didn’t exist before.

And every time a user under 18 is on Instagram or Facebook for 15 consecutive minutes, that person will receive an on-screen prompt, though Meta didn’t detail what it would say. Prompts will also appear after 60 minutes and 90 minutes of use, the company said.

Meta said it would also ban the number of “likes” that some people said could cause anxiety, and prevent teenagers from using “extreme makeup filters” and filters that mimic cosmetic surgery.

Meta said it would introduce stronger protections against “unwanted contact with strangers”, including restricting adults from messaging or viewing teenagers’ content. The company did not explain how the protections and restrictions will work.

Meta also promised to give teenagers a new way to report harmful content and pledged to respond to 90 percent of those reports within six hours.

Meta agreed to maintain and improve the tools it offered parents to see how much time their children spend on apps, what content they search for and what kinds of interactions they make with adults. Parents will be notified when their children create new accounts or have interactions with accounts that the company deems suspicious.

Social media apps have long struggled to find out how old their users are, and Meta and others have been developing tools to confirm the age of new users. Last week, OpenAI announced “ChatGPT for Teens,” a new mode for the chatbot with more protections for young users, and said it monitors more than 2,000 signals to determine if a user is under 18.

As part of Wednesday’s settlement, Meta said it would invest more in age verification technology to identify which users are teenagers and remove those it believes are under 13.