In an official post dated 21st November, Meta has announced that it has introduced new teen security features for Facebook and Instagram in order to protect teenagers and their privacy online. Teenager’s online privacy protection has been an issue since ever.
This time meta has addressed the issue more seriously and has defaulted everyone under the age of 16 or 18 into more privacy settings. Besides that, here are few other ways teenagers might enjoy more online protection.
Protection from Suspicious Accounts
In addition to existing measures by meta, some new ways are being tested to protect teens from suspicious people messaging them, or from adults they are not connected to.
Meta will not recommend suspicious accounts to teenagers. Facebook considers an account “suspicious” if it has been reported or blocked by a young user. For additional measures, meta is also testing to remove messages button on teen accounts if a suspicious account tries to access them.
Safety Tools
A number of new tools are available to teenagers to help them use Facebook and Instagram safely. If they feel uncomfortable about their interactions on the platforms, they can report the platform which can suggest them how to navigate inappropriate messages from adults.
Meta also claims that it has simplified access to reporting tools which has resulted in an increase in reports. Here are some examples of safety features.
New Privacy Defaults
Teens will have more control over how they interact on Facebook. New accounts and old accounts on Facebook will be encouraged to choose from more private settings. some of these are shown here in the recent post on the meta website. The settings are as follows:
Who can see your friends list.
Who can see the pages, people and lists that you see.
who can seaports you are tagged in.
Review the posts before they appear on your profile
Who is allowed to comment on your posts.
Meta is also working with various departments like National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to build a global platform for teens who are worried about their intimate images online when they are used to exploit them.
One can hope that with these stringent measures, teenagers online experience on Facebook and Instagram will improve in the coming months.
