Amid the issues circulating on social media giant Facebook, they announced that they will be launching new features that will lessen the potential harm for its younger users.
In a live report by CNN’s State of the Union, Facebook Vice President of global affairs Nick Clegg said one of the new measures of Instagram will be a safety feature called ‘Take a Break’ which will ‘nudge’ teenagers to take a break from using the app.
“Our systems see that teenagers are looking at the same content over and over again, and it’s content which may not be conducive to their well-being,” Clegg said “We will nudge them to look at other content,” he continued.
.@DanaBashCNN presses Facebook Vice President of
Global Affairs Nick Clegg on tens of thousands of pages of internal research and documents, which were released by a whistleblower, indicating the company
was aware of various problems caused by its platforms. #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/HrFAZw4cvy— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) October 10, 2021
Moreover, Clegg did not fully disclose the details about the said upgrade since the new feature is still in the process of testing.
Prior to Clegg’s announcement, Instagram head Adam Mosseri has also talked about the “take a break” feature in his blog where he posted about hitting pause on Instagram for Kids.
“We announced last week that we’re exploring two new ideas: encouraging people to look at other topics if they’re dwelling on content that might contribute to negative social comparison, and a feature tentatively called “Take a Break,” where people could put their account on pause and take a moment to consider whether the time they’re spending is meaningful,” Mosseri explained.
Moserri stated that they do research to make Instagram better. They aim to have an established application where their insights shed light on problems and at the same time inspire new ideas and changes that will benefit the users.
“Examples include our industry leading anti-bullying work such as Restrict, Hidden Words, and Limits, and our recent changes to make Instagram accounts private by default for those under 16,” he added.
Aside from the ‘Take A Break’ feature, Instagram also wanted to provide an update that will build Instagram for people under the age of 13, often referred to as “Instagram Kids.”
“We started this project to address an important problem seen across our industry: kids are getting phones younger and younger, misrepresenting their age, and downloading apps that are meant for those 13 or older,” Moserri exclaimed.
Instagram is a social media application that allows users to create and share photos, stories, and videos. This fast-growing application was acquired by Facebook in April 2012.
Source: https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/pausing-instagram-kids
