Social media giant Meta has today announced new online safety measures to keep young users safe online.
The company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, says it hopes to protect young people from harm and seeks to create safe, age-appropriate experiences for teenagers on its platforms.
The new tools aim to make it easier to report harmful accounts and includes safety notifications and more default privacy settings.
Cyber safety consultant John Parsons told Breakfast the “influence of this technology on a child that’s developing can be quite profound”.
“I see lots of teenagers who are racked with anxiety about the shape of their body, about how they relate to other people because they attach value to things that are often false,” he said.
“Social media tends to send the message you’ve got to look like a certain type of person and those things are damaging for young people.
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While Parsons acknowledged how Meta is “doing their best to deal with this,” he said “do remember that their answerable to their shareholders, not to us”.
“If you’re going to put these methods in place, how do we check the efficacy of them: in 12 months’ time?” he said.
“We should start with a baseline and then in 12 months, say, ‘Have we caused a shift?’ That’s what we need to be able to see from these companies. “.
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