Meta’s has been listening to some concerns after all especially now after some pressure.
These changes very well could help parents moderate their teens. Meta’s head of product says these changes address particular 3 concerns in an Npr interview.
Will this be the end of the complaints and concerns geared towards Instagram, probably not.
How many users does IG have that are registered as under 18?
I’m 25 now, but I still always say I was born in the 80s out of habit…
It’s a good step, but it won’t fix things.
as someone from the 80’s I’m offended somehow.
70s checking in, whippersnapper.
Nothing can fix things because teenagers will not cooperate. If Instagram could identify all its teenage users, those users would move to a platform that couldn’t. The only thing the restrictions achieve is a reduction in the market share of the platform with the restrictions.
I think it would be naive to think that they don’t know this already. Not to say that I think you’re making that argument, but that I think the losses are calculated against the benefit of the appearance of care that this move affords them. Sure, these new restrictions and tooling means that some parents will be more willing to allow their teens to engage with the platform, but there’s no way that will outweigh the active user reduction in the targeted age range.
The real benefit is looking like they’re doing stuff in a positive direction in the context of minors. I’m definitely expecting them to point at this move (and its voluntary nature) as an argument against future regulation proposals. Especially the part where they’re ostensibly putting that control in parents’ hands.
I still always say I was born in the 80s out of habit…
I always say 1900 out of habit… I was at least once rejected as too old :D
Lego is serious about those 4-99 age limits, huh?
If I get offered the whole calendar, I will use the whole calendar!
are you a February 29 1900 enjoyer?
Respectable elo.
That’s ageist. I maintain my god given right to lie about being the oldest person on earth.
I’m 25 now, but I still always say I was born in the 80s out of habit…
…?
For those “special” websites
If you’re 25 now, you were 15 during the early wild west days of smartphone adoption, while we as a society were just figuring that stuff out.
Since that time, the major tech companies that control a big chunk of our digital identities have made pretty big moves at recording family relationships between accounts. I’m a parent in a mixed Android/iOS family, and it’s pretty clear that Apple and Google have it figured out pretty well: child accounts linked to dates of birth that automatically change permissions and parental controls over time, based on age (including severing the parental controls when they turn 18). Some of it is obvious, like billing controls (nobody wants their teen running up hundreds of dollars in microtransactions), app controls, screen time/app time monitoring, location sharing, password resets, etc. Some of it is convenience factor, like shared media accounts/subscriptions by household (different Apple TV+ profiles but all on the same paid subscription), etc.
I haven’t made child accounts for my kids on Meta. But I probably will whenever they’re old enough to use chat (and they’ll want WhatsApp accounts). Still, looking over the parent/child settings on Facebook accounts, it’ll probably be pretty straightforward to create accounts for them, link a parent/child relationship, and then have another dashboard to manage as a parent. Especially if something like Oculus takes off and that’s yet another account to deal with paid apps or subscriptions.
There might even be network effects, where people who have child accounts are limited in the adult accounts they can interact with, and the social circle’s equilibrium naturally tends towards all child accounts (or the opposite, where everyone gets themselves an adult account).
The fact is, many of the digital natives of Gen Alpha aren’t actually going to be as tech savvy as their parents as they dip their toes into the world of the internet. Because they won’t need to figure stuff out on their own to the same degree.
It works well…when a parent makes an account for the express purpose of parental controls. The “issue” are the fake accounts (i.e. “finstas”) that the kids make themselves in which they lie about their age.
Also, side note, Googles child accounts work OK, I would not say they’ve got it on lock. Did you know if you get your kids a debit card and they’re under 13 Google will NOT allow them to add it as their own payment method no matter what consent I’m willing to give to them?
Yea, I had to do a parent sanctioned age-lie to Google so now Google thinks my kids are all 13+ just so I could do the extreme thing of teaching them money responsibilities in an age of digital transactions SMDH
Because they won’t need to figure stuff out on their own to the same degree.
Lol they will the second they get hit with that “you need to get parental consent” screen, that’s how it happened to us all.
More than you can imagine. I haven’t found a student in my high school without IG.
Yes they have an IG but I doubt the birthdate they gave is their real one.
Can confirm. I am 53 year old acc to IG xD
I’m glad nearly every word in this image is highlighted so I’d know what to read.
(I’m just joshin’)
HI JUST JOSHIN I’M WOGI
I think it’s an AI summary (if you read just the highlighted part)
It’s not an ai summary because if it was the wording would had been different from the article. The content featured in the screenshot is from the article and I manually draw attention to parts I am interested in and also to narrow things down. I started highlighting instead of redacting just so people wouldn’t say i’m censoring.
For those who think it’s an ai summary idk what to tell you.
If you read the whole text and interpret the highlights as emphasis then it’s just annoying and hard to read (sort of like those people who add random commas everywhere). If you read just the highlighted text then it sounds like a summary, but there are mistakes in it, which is why I assumed AI.
Seriously what is this crap
Na, that’s a total valid point. In school you could tell anyone who’s note book was a giant yellow soggy mess was not going to adjust well to adult life.
deleted by creator
…as private as an Instagram account can be, anyway.
As a user of bionic reading, wtf did you do to your text
Yeah, I’m not sure. People are calling it highlighting, but it doesn’t fit any reasonable pattern to have been manually highlighted. Is there some sort of bad automated highlighting? Or just someone still learning what highlighting is even used for. Or is it just some sort of style thing?
It’s highlighting, what’s wrong with that? I thought it was an improvement from my earlier posts where I was blocking out filler to narrow down the article.
I highlight the parts I want to read if I were to revisit the article, to narrow it down and save time. Could be useful for users too who just want to get the story and not read a lot of filler.
is it still highlighting when everything is highlit?
Yeah, you don’t need to put this much effort in. Bold/highlight one key thing for emphasis at most. Maybe two.
It doesn’t take much time or effort to do. If I highlight one or two things, then when I read it again, I’l have to gasp read through a good portion of the article again.
Sometimes there is more then just two things to highlight.
You’re still overthinking it, and my reply. It’s ok tho. Game recognize game.
This has all happened before and it will all happen again. This is what it looks like when a social media company tries to head off an incoming regulatory push.
Wait, There are Teens who don’t private their accounts? That’s wierd.
They have an account their parents can see and private accounts
Not really, teenagers naturally want to socialize. It’s pretty normal. Is it the best thing? no.
the weirder thing is teens using their real identity online at all.
How are they going to identify who are teens?
Meta said it was fully expecting many teenagers would try to evade the new measures.
“The more restrictive the experience is, the stronger the theoretical incentive for a teen to try and work around the restriction,” Mr Mosseri said.
In response, the company is launching and developing new tools to catch them out.
Instagram already asks for proof of age from teenage users trying to change their listed date of birth to an adult one, and has done since 2022.
Now, as a new measure, if an underage user tries to set up a new Instagram account with an adult date of birth on the same device, the platform will notice and force them to verify their age.
In a statement, the company said it was not sharing all the tools it was using, “because we don’t want to give teens an instruction manual”.
“So we are working on all these tools, some of them already exist … we need to improve [them] and figure out how to provide protections for those we think are lying about their age,” Mr Mosseri said.
The most stubborn category of “age-liars” are underage users who lied about their age at the outset.
But Meta said it was developing AI tools to proactively detect those people by analysing user behaviour, networks and the way they interact with content.
birthdate of course! everyone knows you can’t lie about your birthday!
Only took them 14 years, lol
“If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you jump off too?”
Glad we found the answer to that parental koan.
That’s… a good thing. Tzuky? Are you ok?
Trying to avoid regulations of course.
Yeah! I love effective regulations!
Only effective if this doesn’t placate the regulators and Congress and something is actually done.
At least it’s a step in the right direction. Especially since they’ve been extremely evil when it comes to teens. Tho I’m sure they’ll figure out how to continue to be evil with these restrictions/guidelines in place.
They know their network is harmful to teens for years now, I wonder why NOW they are finally doing something about it?
Social media companies, adult websites, whatever, can try to find ways to block children from accessing their content, but kids will always find a way around it.
It’s the parents’ responsibility to control their children. I’ve said 1000 times, children don’t need access to smartphones and tablets. A desktop PC or laptop with strict parental controls is adequate enough for school work, learning about technology, and some basic entertainment.
When a child is old enough to work and pay for a smartphone themselves, then they’re old enough to have a smartphone. A prepaid flip phone with basic voice and SMS is more than enough for a 15-year-old.
but kids will always find a way around it.
🔄
A desktop PC or laptop with strict parental controls is adequate enough
You made an infinite loop and the process has hung.
the children will find away around it, but it is adequate