Meta Platforms will let parents track how much time their children are spending on Instagram and will soon launch parental supervision features on Quest virtual reality headsets, the company said in a statement.
The new parental controls are part of Meta’s pledge to protect children using its social media apps, after an internal document that showed Instagram was aware that it caused body image problems for some teenage girls. The disruption caused due to the leaked documents led to Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, testifying before Congress in December, where he was examined about children’s safety online.
With this feature, parents will be able to view what accounts their children follow and can set time limits for how long their kids can spend on the app. In May, Meta will launch a dashboard that includes supervision tools for its Quest headsets and will automatically block teens from downloading age-inappropriate apps on Quest. Parental supervision on both Instagram and Quest will require approval from teens, Meta said in a blog post.