Meta Tightens Social Media Security for Teenagers: What You Need to Know

2024-01-27 12:59:06

NWith people of all ages browsing social media more than the rest of the world, the security risks are greater. Social media has become an unsafe place for women and children as it is a breeding ground for ill-intentioned, fake and manipulated identities. At the same time, social media use is an inevitable part of everyday life, so everyone needs to navigate there carefully. Concerns about social media use, especially by teenagers, are growing among parents and adults around the world. Sometimes social media companies listen to their concerns and requests.

In that regard, Meta has recently announced that it has further tightened its social media security procedures. In particular, on Messenger and Instagram, teenage users are prohibited from receiving direct messages, known as DMs, from anyone they do not follow or are not naturally connected to. This new provision provides adequate protection for children below 18 years of age in many countries including India.

Users under 18 years of age will now only receive private messages from their Facebook friends or people associated with numbers registered on the phone. Parental permission is required to remove this control feature in Parental Controls.

Meta has also been making efforts to provide teens with only age-appropriate experiences, similar to its social media apps. This new change has been made as part of those efforts. The new provision comes as a follow-up to a meta-action aimed at restricting private messaging to teenagers who are unfollowed by adults.

Following this, META has also decided to introduce measures to prevent teenagers from accessing images and videos that are inappropriate for their age. Meta said that this arrangement will come into effect later this year.

It has made a major decision to check those who spend hours on Instagram recently. Instagram has taken this decision considering the health of people who spend time on Instagram especially late at night. This feature was introduced as Night Time Nudge. With the help of this feature, users who spend more than 10 minutes late at night on Instagram will be immediately alerted. You spend too much time on Insta. A warning will appear asking you to close the application.

The main objective of Instagram is that it does not have any adverse effect on the health of Instagram users. The amount of time teenagers and girls are spending on Instagram is increasing recently. Health experts warn that this will affect sleep. It is in this situation that Instagram has brought a facility called ‘Night Time Nudge’. With this feature, it was announced that teenagers will receive instant bans if they open anything like reels or live messages for more than 10 minutes in the middle of the night.