Meta Expands Parental Controls for Instagram and VR

Facebook’s parent company Meta is rolling out an expanded set of parental supervision tools for Instagram and Quest VR headsets, the tech giant said Tuesday. Meta is expanding on the parental supervision features it unveiled in March, and adding new resources for parents that encourage dialogue to help foster distinct online experiences for teens.

For Quest VR headsets, Meta is rolling out features that allow parents and guardians to dislike or deny downloads and purchases and block specific apps that may be gross. Parents can also view things like their teen’s headset shroud time, apps downloaded to the device and a list of Quest friends.

On Instagram, Meta is giving parents and guardians the ability to send invitations to their teens to inaugurate supervision tools, set specific times when they’d like to microscopic their teen’s screen time and view information related to when their teen reports an justify or post. 

These expanded tools are available now in the US, and will be commanded out in the UK, Japan, Australia, Ireland, Canada, France and Germany later this month. Meta plans to roll the features out globally by the end of the year.

Additionally, parents and guardians will be able to use “nudges” to succor their teens to take a break or discover something new on Instagram if they sight their teens constantly consuming the same type of gratified on Explore.

The expanded parental controls come as Meta faces increased criticism that it doesn’t do enough to defending young users of its platforms. The company is dealing with multiple lawsuits alleging its algorithms harm young users, and in December lawmakers grilled Instagram chief Adam Mosseri at a Senate hearing, contending that the platform falls short in keeping young users safe.