The holiday season is notoriously a time for teens to spend joyful time with their friends, which these days very much includes the virtual space. In a continued effort to protect their users, Meta has announced a new set of updates including tools and settings to better protect younger users from potential exposure to predators and other harmful behaviors in the app.
This includes much stricter privacy control by default on Facebook for all users under the age of 16 that sign up for an account. The control includes limiting who can see these user’s friends list and the Pages they follow within the app. It will also hide posts they are tagged in and stop non-connections from commenting on their public posts.
These efforts are in the hopes that younger users will have a higher level of privacy while using the platform, which is probably a good idea considering the plans Meta has for the Metaverse. However, all users can change the settings to turn this privacy control off.
Meta implemented similar on Instagram last July, with users under the age of 16 now defaulted into private accounts, which means that non-connections can’t view or comment on their posts or Stories, while they’re also not displayed in Explore or searches.
In addition to this, Meta’s also testing a new tool which will allow younger users to report and block ‘suspicious’ adults on the platform.
“A ‘suspicious’ account is one that belongs to an adult that may have recently been blocked or reported by a young person, for example.”
This will block these ‘suspicious’ users from sending a message to young users, while it will also remove their accounts as suggestions in young users’ ‘People You May Know’ recommendations.
“As an extra layer of protection, we’re also testing removing the message button on teens’ Instagram accounts when they’re viewed by suspicious adults altogether.”
Meta will add new notifications encouraging young users to utilize these tools and features as they use the app.
You can see in the images above an example of how Meta will prompt younger users to turn on these new privacy features, including new safety notifications with information on how to, for example, deal with inappropriate messages from adults.
It’s noteworthy to mention that Meta is also working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to expand its program to help teen users stop the misuse of their intimate images. It enables users to create an image ID for and track any of their intimate images. Meta launched an initial version of this process with a range of partners in Europe last year, which is now expanding to even more regions.
Meta has put extra precaution towards protecting its younger users which is not unfounded, given the extensive data supporting how Facebook and Instagram have been utilized by predators and how platforms like Meta are greatly utilized by younger users.
The responsibility will always be with the parent to control the environment of young users anywhere on the internet, but it is still the responsibility of platforms like Meta to do all they can to protect their younger users. So in a rare moment, we salute Meta for their efforts.
