More protection on social media and in MessengerFacebook introduces teen accounts

Teen accounts are actually nothing new on Meta's platforms (which primarily include Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp ). Meta already introduced teen accounts on Instagram last year. Meta also began introducing teen accounts on Facebook a few months ago. However, as with many new features on the platforms, they are only being rolled out gradually over a longer period of time. Facebook itself writes: "Teen accounts are currently only available in some locations. Teen accounts are rolled out individually. This means that these accounts may be available to some teens sooner than others - even within the same family." Teen accounts should now finally be available in the majority of countries. We summarize what will change as a result.

What will change with teen accounts on Facebook

• The visibility of posts is automaticallyrestricted so that only friends can see them. The same applies to all other content such as reels, stories, friend lists and the followed pages. This prevents strangers from accessing teen content. The setting "Can anyone remix your future public reels?" is completely deactivated for teen accounts.
• Strangers can also not send messages to teens via Facebook Messenger. Teen accounts can only exchange messages with friends or people they are already in contact with. Anyone who has the phone number of a teenager can send a contact request.
• Facebook hides posts for teen accounts that have been identified as potentially offensive or harmful.
• Previously, posts in which teenagers were flagged automatically appeared in their profile. In future, teens can first check whether this post should actually be published on their page. This will prevent other people from unintentionally posting content on the profiles of young users.
• After60 minutes of use per day, young people are sent a message reminding them to close Facebook. However, this does not restrict use and the message can be ignored.
• Between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., the so-called sleep mode is activated. This means that notifications from the app are muted. However, it is possible to use Facebook and Messenger during this time.

What safety measures does parental control offer for teenagers on Facebook?

Parents of teenagers with teen accounts can link their own account to that of their child. They then have access to numerous functions. For example, they can:

• view the  child's usage time by day, week or month,
• restrict the use of Facebook by setting daily time limits,
• manage some privacy and sensitive contentsettings for their child.

Facebook has listed all the Parental Control featureson this page. Instructions on how to set up Parental Controls for Android, iOS or on your computer can be found here.

Although the function is called Parental Controls, it is generally not restricted to parents. Facebook does write in the help section: "Note: A teenager's account can only be supervised by one parent." However, it does not seem to verify parenthood at any point, for example through official documents. The only requirement is that the parent account belongs to a person over the age of 18 and the teen account belongs to a person between the ages of 13 and 17. Both must confirm that they agree to parental control. And both can unilaterally terminate parental control at any time. In this case, however, the other party will receive a message. This means that parents do not have to worry that their children will be able to delete the parental control unnoticed.