Meta Introduces New Parental Supervision Tools for VR, Instagram

Meta has today announced some new parental supervision tools and resources for its Quest devices and virtual reality products, as well as a suite of new updates for its teen well-being and parental tools for Instagram.

Meta says it has designed all of its new features with the input of teens, parents, experts, and policymakers. “we’ll continue to work collaboratively to meet the needs of young people on our platforms,” the social media giant said.

Below are some details of Meta’s new and updated parental supervision tools and resources:

• Starting this month, parents and guardians in Canada will be able to send invitations to their teens to initiative supervision tools, schedule times throughout the day or week to limit their teens’ use of Instagram, and see more information when their teen reports an account or post.
• Meta is rolling out a new nudge that encourages teens to switch to a different topic if they’re repeatedly looking at the same type of content on Explore. These nudges are based on expert guidance, as well as internal and external research suggesting that they can help shift online behavior.
• The company is also rolling out parental supervision tools to all Quest headsets and launching a new Parent Education Hub with resources to help parents discuss virtual reality with their teens.
• New resources have been included in the Family Center from MediaSmarts, a Canadian non-profit that focuses on digital and media literacy.

If you already have supervision set up on Instagram, these updates are now available in addition to our other supervision tools.