What you need to know
- Instagram is launching its new Family Center with parental controls.
- Family Center allows parents to supervise certain activities and includes an education hub with tips on discussing social media with teens.
- Family Center is launching now in the US, with a global rollout coming later.
Instagram is introducing a new Family Center feature that aims to tackle the company's growing challenges around teen safety and mental health. The feature was announced on Thursday in a blog post by Instagram head Adam Moserri who has been vocal about Instagram's commitment to protecting its users.
Family Center brings a host of parental supervision features to the platform, allowing parents to get a clear picture of how their kids are using the app. In this initial release, parents are able to view how much time their kids spend on the app and set limits. They'll also be able to view updates on who their kids follow, what accounts follow their kids, and be notified if their kids report an account on the app.
In addition to parental supervision, Instagram also worked with experts to include an education hub in Family Center, which will provide helpful tips on how parents can discuss social media with their children and more.
Soon, Instagram will include additional features that will give parents the ability to set the hours that their kids can access the app and provide access to supervision features to more than one parent.
These new Parental Controls come at a fairly turbulent time for Instagram, which has been battling claims that the app is detrimental to teens' mental health, a claim that Instagram has no doubt fought. However, the company has recently rolled out a number of features aimed at nudging teens away from the app after a certain amount of time.
Instagram parent company Meta also just announced VR supervision tools for its popular Quest 2 headset, which will roll out in May.
For now, Instagram's new Family Center supervision tools are only available in the U.S., but they hope to roll them out globally "over the coming months." For those that have access to the new feature, Instagram has set up a support page to help you get started monitoring your kids.
