Virtual Reality (VR) And Instagram Now Provide New Tools And Resources For Parents And Teenagers.

New resources for parents and guardians in virtual reality and Instagram have been announced today.
We have started including parental control features in all Quest headsets. Instagram’s new parental control features are being rolled out worldwide, and parents may now ask their teenagers to use them.

New notifications and prompts to take Take a Break will also be added to assist young users in managing their Instagram usage.

We’re starting to push out Instagram’s parental controls worldwide today. With the launch of Family Centre, parents everywhere will have easy access to tools that allow them to monitor their teen’s use of Instagram. With these resources, guardians can do things like:

Parents may monitor and restrict their children’s Instagram use.
Parents should restrict their teen’s Instagram use to set hours of the day or week.
Be informed of who was reported and what kind of information was reported when their adolescent reports an account or post.
Parents may see who their teenagers are following and who is following them on social media.

Quest Parental Supervision Guides and Materials

We have started including parental control features in all Quest headsets. Parents and guardians can do the following on the Parent Dashboard:

Permit their teen to use a prohibited app (based on its IARC rating) with parental approval.
A parent will be notified when a teen 13 or older submits a “Ask to Buy” request.
From the Oculus mobile app, the parent may choose to grant or decline the request.
Parents may prevent their adolescent from accessing potentially harmful applications by blocking particular apps from being downloaded to their device. Web browsers and applications from the Quest Store are two examples of software that can be restricted.
See their teen’s app library in its entirety.
Get “Purchase Notifications,” which will notify you whenever your kid buys something in VR.
Parents may monitor their teen’s virtual reality usage with the Oculus mobile app’s headset screen time feature.
Parents may check out who their adolescent is adding on Oculus.
Parents should disable Link and Air Link so their adolescent can’t view PC stuff on their Quest headset.
Parents can only link to their adolescent’s account with their consent and after the teen has initiated the procedure.

We’re also releasing a new section of our website dedicated to educating parents about virtual reality and providing resources to facilitate conversations about the medium with their children.

Our tools for parental monitoring will continue to develop and improve over time, but this is just the beginning of an iterative process influenced by close cooperation with industry experts.

Instagram is Increasing Parental Controls
Instagram now allows parents to do the following

Initiate monitoring features and invite your adolescent to do so. Invites may be sent out at first solely by teenagers.
Parents may limit their teen’s Instagram use by day of the week or by certain hours of the day.
Learn more about the report, the user, and the nature of the report when their adolescent reports an account or post.
These enhancements are now accessible in the United States in addition to our existing Instagram oversight tools. The UK, Japan, Australia, Ireland, Canada, France, and Germany are among the nations where this set of tools will be made available starting this month, with a worldwide release scheduled for the end of the year. Come check out our Resource Centre for Families!

Encourage Instagram Use Among Teens.

Teens should expect to encounter additional prompts on Instagram. If teenagers in a certain country keep clicking on the same sort of information in Explore, they will receive a message asking them to switch topics. This prod is meant to get them out of their comfort zones and learning about new things, so it avoids anything that may lead to their comparing themselves to others.

We implemented this change because studies have shown that gentle prods might encourage users, especially young ones, to improve their present-moment social media behaviour. An overwhelming majority of respondents (58.2%) to an external research on the effects of nudges on social media use said that nudges improved their social media experience by encouraging them to be more aware of how much time they spent on each site. One week of testing showed that 20% of kids who saw our new nudges shifted to a different topic, so we know they work.

To encourage users to log off of Instagram and give their minds a rest, we introduced the Take a Break function. New prompts to activate Take a Break after a certain amount of time spent scrolling in Reels will be available for adolescents very soon. Young content producers like @foodwithsoy, @abraxaxs, and @mayasideas will provide their own advice for taking a break and the benefits of disconnecting from social media in the Reels that will be featured in the reminders. These are currently undergoing trials in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand before their official release later this summer.

We’re also providing resources and training to young producers in the United States so that they may increase the amount of positive, uplifting material they post on Instagram for teenagers. Creators in the programme will receive advice from an Expert Steering Committee comprised of experts in child psychology and digital literacy on how to create responsible content online, how to look after themselves and their communities online and offline, and how to use language in a way that promotes positive emotions and positive self-perception.