VIRGINIA – As legislative discussions are underway involving social media, Meta invited us to discuss youth safety on their popular platforms, Instagram and Facebook.
Meta came under fire last year when attorneys general throughout the country, including Virginia, sued the company. They claimed that the social media platforms are destructive to teens’ mental health.
Meta disagrees and shared some of the ways they are keeping safety and wellbeing top of mind.
“There are over 30 tools to support not only teens but also their parents,” Meta’s Global Director of Youth Safety Policy Nicole Lopez said. “They range from allowing and supporting parents to set limits for their teens’ time online to help teens protect themselves from bullies online.”
In January, Meta began hiding more types of age-inappropriate content for teens. They also launched nighttime nudges, a notification for teens to take a break when they’ve spent more than 10 minutes online late at night.
Lopez said they’ve also been taking measures to block predators from talking to your child.
“If we see signals that an adult is potentially suspicious, we don’t allow them to find teens,” Lopez said. “Furthermore, if a teen is already connected with somebody and we see those signs, we surface what we call a safety notice to a teen to educate them and to let them know that they should be blocking or restricting that person.”
Inappropriate and deceiving artificial intelligence is another challenge they’re trying to combat.
“We take the same approach to AI that we do with our approach to youth safety and wellbeing,” Lopez said. “We’re continuing to think through and problem solve for these issues as they come up.”
Ultimately, Lopez said one of the best things parents can do is have conversations with their kids.
“Also, using our parental supervision tools,” Lopez said. “They give parents insights into how much time their teen is spending online, who their teen is following, who you know their teen is reporting in terms of content that they see as problematic.”
Meta said they are pushing for federal legislation that requires parental approval at the app store before someone under 16 can even download one of their apps.