The hidden Facebook feature protecting kids that parents are loving
By Nikolina Koevska Kharoufeh |
Meta is ?applying safety measures to a whole new area of their social media offering - Messenger.
Announcing the new tools at the Youth Safety Summit in Singapore, ?the social giant is targeting the communication app in an attempt to make it safer for teens.
"When it comes to young people, we're always asking ourselves 'How do we really help them build responsible connections?'," Meta's Global Head of Safety, Antigone Davis tells 9Honey Parenting in the wake of the announcement.
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The first set of parental supervision tools being rolled out ?are targeting a young user's privacy and safety settings จC allowing parents and guardians to be consistently updated on changes.
Teens can connect their account to their parent's or guardian's and in doing so they will be notified when a young user's Messenger contact list changes, or when if their teen reports someone.
They also now have the ability to view who can message their teen and who can see their Messenger stories. ?
And teens can check in on the time they spend on the app, to prompt them to take a break from their screen.
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"We have to not only support the child or the young person, but we want to be able to support the parent or the caregiver who is sort of taking responsibility for that child," Davis says.
Six years ago the social media giant launched Messenger Kids aimed at kids under 13, who can't yet have their own accounts under Facebook's rules.
The app is 100 per cent controlled by an adult user and children aren't able to add their own friends or delete messages?.
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Meta ?has a wide range of parental supervision tools available on it's pool of platforms which includes Facebook and Instagram.
"We have over 30 tools at this point to support young people and their parents," she explains.
"We've also taken a co-design approach in this area because we wanted to land that spot where these tools would be very useful to parents and at the same time help support parents."
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Last year the social giant launched a few stand out safety features, which included a prompter for teens to report accounts to the platform after they block someone, and send them safety notices with information on how to navigate inappropriate messages from adults.
All users under the age of 16 are also defaulted into more private settings when the join Facebook, which includes the ability to review tagged posts before they show up on their feed and the transparency of their friend list.
?Now focusing in on the Messenger app specifically, Meta is hoping to bring parents and guardians into their teen's social experience, to help keep them safe.
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"I think people often think that teens don't want their parents involved in their online lives. But what we find is that teens do, and it's sort of finding that right spot where they can," David tells 9Honey Parenting.
Though the Meta Safety team does understand that there are still a large group of young users who do not invite their parents into their online world, and this can be a challenge.
"I really encourage parents to begin talking to their kids much younger than the age of 13, letting them understand what your values are," she suggests.
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"Let them know that it's important to you that if they have a phone that they're using it responsibly that they take time to be with their friends and go outside and not just communicate with their friends online."
"It's not great to try to start having these conversations about what your expectations are when they're 13 and moved into that stage where they roll their eyeballs at you."
Alongside these open and honest conversations, Meta ?also has a Family Centre which provides parents and guardians with specialised expert advice on how to keep their kids safe online.
And they are also hoping to target kids in a school environment by working with Project Rockit to identify young people's top hopes and concerns in relation to the digital future.
One stand out safety feature for Davis on Instagram is Hidden Words.
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"We have tools and technology in the background that is designed to identify potentially bullying content and to remove it from the platform. But that being said, bullying is sometimes very hard to detect."
Launched in 2021 and improved in 2022, Hidden Words allows a user to enter specific words or phrases they want to be automatically hidden if found in comments or Direct Messages.
"I think that's a really important feature and something I want parents to know about, to help them empower their own their child inside of their online experience."
