Instagram Launches New Parental Supervision Tools in the US

Parents and lawmakers have been urging Meta to improve protections on its platforms to keep teens safe. On March 16, Meta finally introduced the first set of new enhanced parental control tools designed to protect the platform's younger users in something called the Family Center.

The new supervision tools are aimed to let parents and guardians monitor the activity of their kids on Instagram as well as set time limits on how long their children can use the app.

Parents will also be able to see which accounts their kids follow and who follows them. In addition, parents will be able to get notified once their kids report other users.

It should be noted that teens will need to initiate supervision themselves from the app on their mobile devices. Starting in June, guardians and parents will be able to start the process, but teens will still need to approve parental supervision to launch the control tools.

In the coming months, Instagram plans to expand parental control options, such as allowing parents to set specific times when teens can use the social media platform and allowing more than one guardian or parent to supervise the account of their kids.

Instagram parental monitoring tools are currently available in the US and will be rolled out globally in the coming months.

Meta plans to eventually make parental control tools available across its other platforms, such as Meta's other apps like Facebook and its VR platform.