As part of the settlement, the social media giant has agreed to make a number of changes to the way Instagram and Facebook operate for its youngest users.<\/p>\n
Some experts say it is long overdue. <\/p>\n
The new safety barriers include a two-hour time limit across both platforms, which will be a default setting for known teen users. But direct messaging on the platforms will not count towards the daily use limit.<\/p>\n
Notifications will be muted between midnight and 06:00 and on school days between 08:00 and 15:00.<\/p>\n
Likes on posts and content will also be entirely hidden on the platforms for teens.<\/p>\n
Most of these new features will be made either default or an option for teens within six months.<\/p>\n
However, new efforts by Meta to better identify which users on its platforms are children will take up to a year to be rolled out.<\/p>\n
I would be surprised if these measures remain within the confines of the US for very long, as other countries will almost certainly be keen to adopt them too.<\/p>\n
Meta also says the new features will only truly help children if all of its rivals adopt them as well. <\/p>\n
It’s a highly competitive industry, but given the global backlash against social media and its impact on children, perhaps others like TikTok and Snapchat may have to follow suit.<\/p>\n
The question then is whether children will still bother with them, once they are deliberately toned down into a much blander offering. <\/p>\n
And perhaps that would bring the social media era to a natural end, as existing adults gradually aged out of it.<\/p>\n
Arturo Bejar, the ex-Instagram engineer turned whistleblower, says the proof of the pudding will be in whether the new teen safety features are effective.<\/p>\n
“At the end of the day, Meta needs to be held accountable for results, not efforts,” he told me.<\/p>\n
Additional reporting from Kali Hays<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As part of the settlement, the social media giant has agreed to make a number of changes to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":751010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-751009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=751009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/751010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=751009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=751009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=751009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}