Meta releases parental supervision features on Threads to protect teenagers

Jakarta (ANTARA) - Meta has announced that it will introduce a parental supervision feature on Threads to help parents monitor the digital activity of teenage users on the social media platform.

According to a report by TechCrunch on Tuesday (21 July) local time, the feature allows parents to see how long their child has used Threads over the past week, set daily usage time limits, manage sleep mode, and adjust a number of privacy settings through Family Centre.

The feature arrives amid growing pressure from governments in various countries for technology companies to strengthen protections for young users on the internet.

The company also still faces a number of lawsuits related to child safety on social media.

With the feature, parents can monitor how long their child uses Threads each day over the past seven days, including the average daily usage time over a week.

If a teenager accesses Threads on several devices at once, such as a mobile phone and a laptop, the time limit set will apply to the cumulative usage time across all those devices.

In addition, parents can restrict or block their child’s access to Threads at night. Threads has already activated a built-in feature that mutes notifications and automatically replies for all teenage users from 22:00 to 07:00.

Meta explained that teenage accounts on Threads are currently equipped with a number of automatically active protections, such as private accounts by default and restrictions on the types of content displayed.

Meta said the parental supervision feature for Threads will begin rolling out in the United States next week. The company aims to make the feature available globally before the end of this year.