(San Francisco) Accused in the United States and Europe of harming the mental health of adolescents, Meta announced Thursday new measures to better protect young users of its social networks, notably the very popular Instagram.
“Before a teenager can modify certain Instagram settings, they will now have to obtain approval from their parents via the parental supervision tools” of the application, indicates the Californian group in a press release.
A minor user will therefore need explicit permission from their parents to change their account from private to public, access more so-called “sensitive” content or have the possibility of receiving messages from people they do not already follow on the platform.
Meta (parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, in particular) wants to better “protect adolescents against unwanted contacts” and “allow parents to more easily influence their children’s online experience”.
For minors, messaging will now be closed by default to anyone they are not already connected with on Instagram.
At the end of October, more than forty American states filed a complaint against Meta, believing that its platforms harm the “mental and physical health of young people”, citing the risks of addiction, cyberharassment or eating disorders.
“Meta has leveraged powerful and unprecedented technologies to attract […] and ultimately trap young people and adolescents in order to make profits,” the attorneys general said in the complaint.
According to the states, Democrats and Republicans, the Californian group has “concealed the way in which these platforms exploit and manipulate the most vulnerable consumers”, and “neglected the considerable damage” caused to the “mental and physical health of our country’s young people” .
The European Commission, for its part, announced in November that it had opened an investigation into the measures implemented by Meta and Snap (Snapchat) to protect minors, in particular their “physical and mental health”, following an identical approach. targeting TikTok and YouTube.