Instagram launches 'Family Center': A parental supervision tool

CHENNAI: To address the issue of growing concerns of child safety in social media platforms, Instagram on Wednesday launched 'Family Center', labelled as a parental supervision tool which will help parents become more involved in their children’s online experience.

"Over the years, we have introduced many age-appropriate features and resources that help in enhancing the experience of youngsters on Instagram. With the launch of 'Family Center', we are trying to strike a balance between the desire of youth for some autonomy while using Instagram and in the same time also allow for supervision in a way that supports conversation between parents and their kids when it is helpful." said Natasha Jog, Head, Public Policy, Instagram, Facebook India (Meta), at the launch of the supervision tool in Chennai.

'Family Center' will allow parents and guardians to manage how much time their teens spend on Instagram as they now set a daily time limit to prevent over usage of Instagram. "The new feature will help teens manage their time on Instagram by setting screen time limits and scheduling breaks during the day and week," said Natasha.

The new feature will also help parents know which accounts their teens follow and the accounts that follow their teens through which they can stay updated about the activities of their children. The new feature will also send notifications for parents when their teen children report someone on Instagram.

Natasha also said that since 2016, Instagram has spent Dollar 16 Billion on safety aspects and there are 40,000 people looking after the safety aspects in the social media platform who have removed more than 2 million contents in July alone from Instagram.

When asked how will parents be able to get access to the accounts of their teen kids Natasha replied that it is the teens who have to send a request for linking the account of their parents in Instagram and only after the approval parents will receive information about the account details of their teen children.

When asked how Instagram verifies the age of the account holders especially children when they open new accounts, Natasha replied that as of now verifying the age of minors is the biggest challenge not just for Instagram but across all social media platforms. "We cannot request IDs as there is an issue of data privacy and so we are using some Artificial Intelligence (AI) based technologies to find out their age. Instagram is also testing a couple of other features such as video selfie which is currently under testing in the USA and social vouching in which two people above the age of 18 should confirm the age of minors. Very soon, Instagram will launch a tool to verify the age of account holders." added Natasha.