According to Instagram, they will now “nudge” teenagers away from the harmful content on their feeds. Not just that, they will also be starting with the “take a break” feature which is a part of Instagram’s latest attempt to address revelations about the effect of Facebook products on the Mental health.
This plan has been released almost in a week or less after Facebook was accused of putting profit over safety by whistleblower Frances Haugen.
Internal Facebook studies were leaked out by Haugen, which showed that Instagram can worsen body images issues and insecurities, eating disorders and other mental health problems, especially when the users are teen girls. She said that Facebook, Instagram’s algorithm can keep these teenagers hooked on it by showing them addictive photos and videos, even though the content is causing mental health issues.
New feature of Facebook looks like and attempt to address such criticism.
“We’re going to introduce something, which I think will make a considerable difference, which is where our systems see that a teenager is looking at the same content over and over again — and it’s content which may not be conducive to their wellbeing — we will nudge them to look at other content,” said Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, in an interview with CNN on Sunday.
Facebook didn’t say how it would decide what content isn’t “conducive” to a teen’s well-being, or how it would differentiate between, say, a girl watching gymnastics videos vs. a girl watching extreme weight-loss videos.
According to Clegg, the company will also introduce tools for parents to monitor their children’s Instagram usage, as well as a “take a break” feature.
“We will be prompting teens to just simply take a break from using Instagram,” said Clegg. He also didn’t go into detail about how that feature would function. Facebook did not respond to a request for more information on the new features from The Washington Post.
