Parents Can Now Easily Monitor Teen Interactions With Meta AI in Canada

Meta is rolling out a brand new way for parents to monitor their teens’ interactions with Meta AI. The latest Meta AI Insights support is now available in Canada, the US, the UK, Australia, and Brazil.

This new parent supervision feature allows parents to see the topics that teens have asked Meta AI over the past week. Parents using supervision features across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger will now see a new ‘Insights’ tab within the supervision menu. This is available on both the app as well as browser experience.

Within the Insights tab, parents can monitor the topics teens have raised with Meta AI. The service generates the topics into top-level categories like School, Entertainment, and Lifestyle to Travel, Writing, and more. From here, parents can tap a topic to see the categories that fall under each broad option. For instance, Health and Wellbeing includes fitness, physical health, and mental health. 

“As we roll out these insights to parents around the world, we’ll keep listening to feedback from both parents and experts, and explore ways to make them even more valuable,” the company says.

Meta has been making commitments to assisting parents in supervising those with Teen Accounts across its services. For instance, last year, Meta began guiding Teen Accounts using PG-13 movie ratings, as defined by the Motion Picture Association, limiting certain content for users. Depending on the topic, Meta AI will not answer certain questions if they are age-inappropriate.

The company also allows parents to stop their children from speaking to AI chatbots. As the company builds out its toolset to protect teens while interacting with AI characters, Meta has temporarily blocked all teens’ access to these AI character chatbots.

In the latest push towards teen protections, Meta is working with the Cyberbullying Research Center to develop conversation starters for parents. Developed with experts, these conversation starters are designed to help parents start non-judgmental conversations with their teens regarding their own interactions with AI. Meta’s conversation starters are available on the Family Center website.

Meta is also introducing its AI Wellbeing Expert Council, comprised of a group of experts supporting ongoing input on AI experiences for teens. The council is made up of members extending across the National Council for Suicide Prevention, the University of Michigan, the University of Texas, and the University of Southern California.