MANILA: Meta on Thursday officially launched enhanced safety features for minors on its social media platform and held a Screen Smart digital literacy program to help educate the public about the features, the Philippine News Agency (PNA) reported.
At the launch event at Fairmont Makati, Meta Asia Pacific Head of Security Policy Malina Enlund said the enhanced features are a concrete contribution at the platform level to support the Philippines’ digital security agenda.
“This initiative responds to growing demand from families, educators and policymakers for practical approaches to protecting young people online,” he said.
Among those safety features is Instagram’s updated Teen Account, which limits the content that can be viewed and accessed by users aged 13 and over.
“These enhanced settings build on existing protections in Teen Accounts, which are automatically enabled as default settings for users aged 13 to 17. Parents determine whether teens under 16 can change any settings to a less restrictive level,” he said.
Specifically, teens need to accept new followers first before their content can be viewed. Only messages from people they follow or have a relationship with will be allowed, and they can only be tagged or mentioned by people they follow.
Additionally, parents can set daily app usage time limits, while a new “sleep mode” feature will silence all notifications at night and send automatic replies to direct messages.
— BERNAMA-PNA
