Meta has released a tool for Instagram in India where parents can keep track of their children's activity on Instagram. This allows a guardian to watch over the kind of content a minor goes through, and prevent them from coming across malicious or violent content.
Not only that, but parents can also monitor the time they spend on the photo and video sharing platform. Instagram will notify the guardians when their ward files a report on the app.
Meta has been working closely with parents, according to Telegraph India, educating them about the workings of the Instagram app and its digital services.
The app feature can be accessed through the Family Center, where they can access the supervision tools and resources. The feature is available in both English and Hindi.
Based on a CNBC article, The Family Center includes resources for a variety of guides concerning the parents, how to be safe online for the LGBTQ community, building healthy digital habits, creating a safe space, and managing your mental health.
Should This Be Released to Other Countries As Well?
Objectively, yes. It's an optional tool that parents don't have to use if it's not something that they want to do. But it can be very useful when you want to shield your children from harmful content. Depending on the child's maturity level, there is still a huge amount of inappropriate posts that can easily be viewed with a swipe of a finger.
As advised by kidsheaalth.org, one way to learn about your kid's experience with social media is to use the apps and games yourself to have a more in-depth perspective of what they spend their time with. You can watch with them while they stream videos so you can point out what's wrong from right.
What Other Tools Can I Use?
If your kid is above 13 years old, then you can create a child email for them using Google or Yahoo. When they use that email to log in to social media or streaming apps, the app itself will restrict mature content and will not reach your child's feed.
If your kid is 13 or below, you can filter your child's internet access by setting up Android or iOS profiles for them. These profiles can be done for their smartphones, tablets, and computers. With this, you can restrict apps and games and even limit their time for using the Internet.
What Apps Should I Watch Out For?
The answer is, all of them. Luckily, some apps have strict age restrictions. Apps like YouTube will ask you to confirm that you are 18 years old or older before you can view mature content. For apps like TikTok and Twitter however, they have a more "liberated" approach to content.
Even if TikTok requires people to be 13 or older to make an account, they can still come across posts that display mature or violent content, which goes the same for Twitter. TikTok is working double time in deleting videos that violate their guideline, while Twitter is suspending accounts that post inappropriate content, but every once in a while, some videosor posts take a while before they are detected.
