Instagram Launches "nudge" To Keep Teens Away From Dangerous Content

Instagram is finally taking action on the initiative announced in 2021 to keep teen users away from dangerous content. The feature will finally be introduced in countries like US, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The social media platform said that if a teen is found spending too much time using its Explore page looking at posts with a particular theme, it will send a notification offering other alternatives to the post.

About the feature, Instagram said that it “is designed to encourage teens to discover something new and excludes certain topics that may be associated with appearance comparison.” While browsing, the teen will get a notification, which prompts them to “Choose what to explore next” along with many other posts that they can choose from. When the user taps on another pot, it will take them to a different stream of content, which is completely different from the original topic the teen was browsing through.

An outside study done by Instagram revealed that 58.2 percent of users “agreed or strongly agreed that nudges made their social media experience better by helping them become more mindful of their time on-platform.” The company said that its study also revealed the same trend- during a one-week period, one in five Instagram users changed the topics, when they received a nudge.

Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, said, “We want to make sure people feel good about the time that they spend on Instagram… This is a way to softly encourage that. matter what topic you’re going deep into, if you’re going particularly deep, we let you know, and we suggest some other topics.”

The company said that users would get the nudges, irrespective of the topics, they are looking through. Instagram spokesperson Liza Crenshaw said, “The notification shows up after scrolling on any topic for a number of consecutive posts. But, what we include in the recommendations of what to switch to excludes content that may be associated with appearance comparison.”

Instagram is also working to bring its Take a Break feature, which encourages teenagers to spend time outside of Instagram, to Reels in a more interactive way. The platform will remind teens to turn on the Take a Break feature if a he/she has been browsing through reels for a while. The feature is at present being tested in the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and the company plans to launch it later.

Instagram is making bringing about some changes to its present parenting control tools. The platform will now allow parents to send invites to their kids getting access to parental supervision tools, which is something earlier only the teen was able to operate. Parents can also view information on what types of posts or accounts their child reports, and also get control over what the child browses through in the Internet.

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