Social media giant Instagram is creating new tools to help parents monitor their kids’ usage of the photo-sharing app.
The tools allow parents to see how much time children spend on Instagram and set time limits. They can also see who their children follow on the site and who follows them.
Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri first announced the changes in a blog post late last year. The company launched its “Take a Break” tool, which encourages users to log off after scrolling for an extensive amount of time, in December.
The change comes several months after former Facebook employee Frances Haugen leaked hundreds of internal documents and accused the company of failing to protect its users.
Ms. Haugen said that Instagram’s parent company Meta — formerly known as Facebook — failed to implement safety features even after an internal investigation showed the app caused harm to teenagers’ mental health. Much of the company’s profits are tied to the length of user “engagement” on the sites it operates.
“The company’s leadership knows ways to make Facebook and Instagram safer and won’t make the necessary changes because they have put their immense profits before people,” Ms. Haugen told a blockbuster Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation hearing in October.
For now, teens will need to initiate the supervision provisions in the app, but in June, Instagram will allow parents to start the monitoring functions, Mr. Mosseri wrote in a blog post-Wednesday.
The new Instagram features are part of an online “family center” that Meta is building with the hope of expanding it to include all of the company’s apps and technologies.
• Peter Santo can be reached at psanto@washingtontimes.com.
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