Meta sets stricter message settings for teens on Instagram, Facebook

These measures come as regulatory bodies across the globe have been raising questions about the safety of children on these social media platforms

Meta on Thursday tightened settings on its social media platforms, Instagram and Facebook, to prevent unfamiliar people from communicating directly with teens aged below 16 or 18 years.

The big tech company said that as an additional step to safeguard teens from unwanted contact, it would turn off their ability to receive direct messages (DMs) on Instagram from anyone they don’t follow or aren’t connected to — including other teens — by default.

“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,” said the company in an email.

The measures come as regulatory bodies worldwide have been raising questions on the safety of children on these social media platforms. A few weeks earlier, Meta had announced features that would allow parents to see how teens spend their time and who they interact with. It also launched “Quiet Mode” globally that would nudge teens to set time limits on Facebook.

The default setting, announced on Thursday, will apply to all teens under the age of 16 years (or 18 in some countries). Those already on Instagram will get a notification at the top of their feed alerting the changes to their message settings.

“We’re also making these changes to teens’ default settings on Messenger, where under 16s (or under 18 in certain countries) will only receive messages from Facebook friends, or people they’re connected to through phone contacts, for example,” said the company.

In addition, Meta plans to launch a new feature designed to help prevent teens from seeing unwanted and potentially inappropriate images in their messages from people they’re already connected to, and to discourage them from sending such images themselves. The company will share more on this later this year.

Parents using supervision will be prompted to approve or deny their teens’ requests to change their default safety and privacy settings to a less strict state — rather than just being notified of the change.

Larry Magid, chief executive officer of internet safety firm ConnectSafely, said: “Empowering parents to approve or deny requests to change their teen’s default safety and privacy settings gives parents the tools they need to help protect their teens, while at the same time respecting their teens’ privacy and ability to communicate with their friends and family.”