Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced new plans to help deal with the problems underage users have when using its social media platforms. The company will now restrict interactions with users under the age of 19; however, many might say that this is “too little too late” and the move will not put a stop to the many lawsuits brought against Meta for damage that was already done.
“As with all our parental supervision tools, this new feature is intended to help facilitate offline conversations between parents and their teens,” said Meta/Facebook in a statement, “as they navigate their online lives together and decide what’s best for them and their family.”
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Meta said that in order to help protect teens from unwanted contact on Instagram it will now restrict adults over the age of 19 from messaging teens who don’t follow them. The company will also limit the type and number of direct messages (DMs) people can send to someone who doesn’t follow them to one text-only message.
Under this new default setting, teens can only be messaged or added to group chats by people they already follow or are connected to, “helping teens and their parents feel even more confident that they won’t hear from people they don’t know in their DMs.” Teens in supervised accounts will need to get their parent’s permission to change this setting (more below).
This default setting will apply to all teens under the age of 16 (or under 18 in certain countries). Those already on Instagram will see a notification at the top of their Feed letting them know we’re making these changes to their message settings.
However, the various state lawsuits stand, at least for now.
The State of New Mexico filed suit against Facebook/Meta in November charging that the world’s largest social media platform exposes minors to pornography and sexual predators. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is also named in the suit that alleges the social media company failed to adequately protect children from sexual abuse, online solicitation, and human trafficking.
In addition to that, in October a whopping civil suit was brought by 33 US states, led by Colorado and California, alleging Facebook, collects personal information of children under the age of 13 and also caused a mental health crisis among youth by making its Instagram social media platform addictive.
