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Instagram gives you more control over what you see.
On Thursday, Instagram launched a new set of features that help you manage what you see in your feed and mute notifications.
Instagram’s changes, which include the option to hide posts containing user-selected keywords (such as “fitness” or “dieting”), appear to address concerns raised by politicians about the platform’s impact on teenagers, following internal documents says former Meta employee Francis Haugen.
The new settings include a silent mode that allows users to set a custom schedule to silence Instagram notifications and auto-reply to direct messages (DMs). The app will automatically prompt teens to enable silent mode when they spend a “set amount of time” browsing the app at night.
Instagram announced parental controls in 2021, but the platform is already taking steps to allow further control over user feeds — and give parents better insight into their kids’ Instagram habits.
Users will now be able to filter posts with specific words in their captions and hashtags. Instagram already allowed users to filter DMs with their own list of potentially harmful or offensive content, but the expanded filtering option will allow users to customize their feeds at a more granular level than before.
The Wall Street Journal reported in 2021 that Facebook’s internal research found significant harmful effects of its products on a relatively small proportion of teenagers. Haugen later revealed that he was the source behind the documents shared with the Journal.
“Thirty-two percent of teenage girls say that when they feel bad about their bodies, Instagram makes them feel worse,” the researchers wrote, according to the Journal. Among teenagers who reported suicidal thoughts, according to the report, 13% of UK users and 6% of US users linked the problem back to Instagram.
At the time, Instagram’s head of public policy wrote in a blog post that while the article highlighted a “limited set of findings,” it supported the research, which they said showed “mixed” findings about whether social media is good or bad for users. . The company promised it was working on ways to minimize the harmful effects, including by “overcoming negative social comparison and negative body image.”
Facebook rebranded as Meta in 2021 as part of a campaign to overhaul its image with a focus on virtual reality and the metaverse.
Lawmakers in Congress and at the state level have increased their focus on how to protect the well-being of children online by imposing new requirements on the platforms. While no changes have yet been codified nationally, California recently passed its Age-Friendly Design Code, which requires platforms to consider how their services may pose a danger to minors and forces them to include the strictest privacy settings default. The state is currently facing a lawsuit from tech industry group NetChoice, which claims the law violates First Amendment rights and could potentially harm minors by limiting their access to important resources.
Quiet Mode will initially be available in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
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