Instagram launched this week new features aimed at teenagers to quell rising outrage over the app’s effects on young users. The feature was unveiled a day before Instagram’s head is to testify in the Senate.
The main feature urges teens to take breaks from the social media platform. The appropriately named “Take A Break” feature tells teenage users to stop scrolling, monitoring how long they have been on the app.
It was rolled out on Tuesday in select countries, including the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. The rest of the world will receive the latest feature in early 2022.
Users have said it feels similar to the time limit feature you can already use to set on your phone to limit your time spent on Instagram and Facebook.
Instagram head Adam Mosseri said that it’s an effort made by Facebook, now named Meta Platforms but not yet referred to colloquially as such, to curb backlash about how the company is refusing to take steps to rein in harmful content.
Also announced today were tools for parents, expected to roll out in early 2022. It will let parents monitor the amount of time teenagers and children spend on the app, and set limit for their children. How this will work has not yet been detailed.
The latest update comes perfectly timed before an upcoming Senate hearing this week about the platform’s potential risk to teens and children. Mosseri will testify before the subcommittee and be grilled on what Instagram did in fact know about its potential harm to users, especially younger users, and what exactly is being done to stop it.
Instagram and Facebook have come under fire this year after a whistleblower leaked internal research that showed not only how the app can harm users, but that its executives and research were well aware. The whistleblower said that the platforms have always chosen profit over wellbeing and safety.
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