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- Facebook reveals it will be introducing new measures across its apps to steer teens away from harmful content
- These measures include prompting teens to take a break from Instagram and nudging them if they are continuously looking at content that is harmful to their wellbeing
- Facebook is also planning to introduce controls that allow parents and guardians to supervise what their teens are doing online
- Executive Director of Fairplay Josh Golin said he doesn’t think introducing controls for parents will be effective since many teens tend to set up secret accounts
- This news follows a global outage that saw Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp go offline for more than six hours due to an error occured during routine maintenace
Facebook has revealed it will be introducing new measures across its apps to steer teens away from harmful content.
These measures include prompting teens to take a break from Instagram and nudging them if they are continuously looking at the same content that is harmful to their wellbeing.
These new controls were outlined by Facebook Vice President for Global Affairs Nick Clegg who made the announcement across various Sunday news shows.
“We are constantly iterating in order to improve our products,” Mr Clegg said.
“We cannot, with a wave of the wand, make everyone’s life perfect. What we can do is improve our products, so that our products are as safe and as enjoyable to use.”
Facebook said it is also planning to introduce controls that allow parents and guardians to supervise what their teens are doing online.
However, Executive Director of Fairplay Josh Golin said he doesn’t think introducing controls for parents will be effective since many teens tend to set up secret accounts.
He also stated that Facebook will need to show how it plans to implement these measures to determine whether it is effective.
“There is tremendous reason to be sceptical,” he said.
This news follows a global outage that saw Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp go offline for a few hours last week.
Being blamed on an error that occurred during routine maintenance, the outage lasted more than six hours and was estimated to cost Facebook around $60 million.
