Meta Finally Addresses Online Safety Concerns For Children

Instagram launched its new Family Center last Wednesday, a service intended to make the platform safer for teens.

The Family Center consolidates Instagram’s online safety resources into one convenient location. It hosts an education hub, conversation guides for discussing online safety, and external resources from The Trevor Project and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Parents now have a dashboard allowing them to monitor any associated Instagram profiles. The tool records account activity and can set time limits on account usage.

Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, explained the service is the first step in a longer-term journey to develop intuitive supervision tools, informed by experts, teens and parents.”

Last year, Instagram and Facebook took heavy criticism for their lack of protection for young users, which often caused poor mental health outcomes, according to reporting from Mashable.

The company hopes that the new Family Center will push users towards healthier usage habits.