Meta thinks new users, especially teenagers, are still signing up for Facebook.
In a new blog post titled “Protecting Teens and Their Privacy on Facebook and Instagram,” published Monday, November 21st, Facebook detailed some new updates to the platform that aim to prevent teens from online harm.
For starters, new users who are under the age of 16 would be defaulted to “more private settings” when they join Facebook, while pre-existing Facebook users under 16 would start seeing pop-ups to enable the new privacy features.
These privacy settings would essentially only allow a teen’s friends to view any post they are tagged in, the teen’s friend list, and the Pages, People and Lists they follow, and set who is allowed to comment on their public posts
Further, Facebook is testing ways to prevent teens from “messaging suspicious adults they aren’t connected to” who show up in their ‘People You May Know’ feed. An adult who has been recently blocked or reported by a teen will now be flagged as a suspicious account, and on Instagram, adults with the suspicious flag won’t be able to message teens.
Over at Instagram, Meta s also encouraging teens not just to block accounts that might cause them online harm, but also to report them. “In just one month in 2021, more than 100 million people saw safety notices on Messenger. We’ve also made it easier for people to find our reporting tools and, as a result, we saw more than a 70percent increase in reports sent to us by minors in Q1 2022 versus the previous quarter on Messenger and Instagram DMs,” wrote the company.
Image credit: Facebook
Source: Facebook
