Instagram is getting tools to protect teens from content potentially harmful to mental health. The company is going to encourage teens who keep watching the same harmful content to watch other content. The parental control option will also be added.
Facebook chief Nick Clegg has announced on several American TV shows that tools are coming to make the platform safer for teens, reports Deadline. Instagram's algorithm will be changed. This will recognize when teens keep looking at the same content that is potentially harmful to their mental well-being. Instagram will then prompt them to look at other content. The new tool will make a significant difference, according to Clegg.
Changes are also coming to Facebook itself. Gregg indicates that in the future, the feed will show fewer posts about politics and more posts from friends. It is not yet known what the impact of this will be. Earlier in July, Instagram added a new feature to Instagram called Sensitive Content Control. With it, users control the extent to which they get to see "sensitive posts" in the Explore tab. The option is only available to users who are 18 or older.
Facebook also plans to introduce new control mechanisms for parents. This will allow parents to monitor what their children do online. It is not yet known exactly how this parental control will work. The tools have yet to be tested and are not yet available.
The tools Instagram plans to introduce are a response to the outcry following internal documents leaked from Facebook. These documents show how Instagram is harmful to a portion of teens.
The whistleblower is former Facebook data scientist Frances Haugen. Haugen last week accused the platform of being bad for young people. Haugen blames the company for not making changes after an internal study found that the social network was having negative effects on teenagers' mental health.
The harmfulness of Instagram and Facebook to young people is part of the political debate in the United States. American politicians promise to do something about the harmful influence of Facebook's algorithm.
