Instagram, which is owned by Meta, has developed the Family Center to address parents’ and guardians’ concerns about their children’s safety and privacy. For those concerned about teen safety on the app, Family Center is a one-stop shop with teen safety solutions such as parental monitoring and educational information.
A specially designed educational hub is also available on the site, which includes Instagram-specific safety explanations, conversation guidelines for guardians to discuss digital safety and wellness, and external resources from partner organizations such as the Trevor Project and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
From a single dashboard, parents can keep a careful eye on their child’s account activity. The dashboard, on the other hand, gives you information about the profiles to which you have been granted access.
Guardians may also keep track of how long monitored accounts have been active on the app, as well as establish time limitations and see who follows and interacts with them frequently.
They can also receive notifications from people if they report an account or a post that shows in their feeds.
This new function was first introduced in December of last year. Although minors must approve monitoring through their own accounts’ settings for the time being, the platform is working on a mechanism for parents to set up supervision outside of an account’s settings in the future. When the account owner reaches the age of 18, however, supervision is immediately removed from the account.
Instagram hopes that the Family Center’s safety tools, particularly educational resources about establishing healthy digital boundaries and habits, will help users have a healthier and safer online experience. Parents and guardians will be able to use the Family Center capabilities across all Meta-owned platforms in the future, with the inclusion of even more safety monitoring tools, and the same safety features will be rolled out to Quest VR in the coming months.
