Feb. 26 (UPI) — Instagram will be adding a new feature in the coming weeks that will notify parents if their teen may be at risk for self-harm.
Meta announced the new feature on Thursday that will begin sending parents alerts next week if their teen has searched for terms related to suicide or self-harm. It is also working on a feature to recognize and alert over similar conversations with AI.
Parents will be notified only when there are repeated searches within a certain timeframe. Certain terms that “suggest a teen wants to harm themselves,” including “suicide” and “self-harm,” will trigger the notifications.
The feature will be available to users in the United States, Britain, Australia and Canada. It will expand to other countries later this year.
The feature will only be available as a protection for Instagram’s parental supervision accounts called Teen Accounts. The alerts will also guide parents toward resources to help their children in these situations.
“When a young person searches about suicide or self-harm, empowering a parent to step in can be extremely important,” Dr. Sameer Hinnduja, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center, said in a statement shared by Meta. “The fact that Meta has now built this in is a meaningful step forward and is the kind of change that child safety experts have been pushing for.”
Parents will receive alerts by an in-app notification, email, text or WhatsApp. This will depend on the contact information they have disclosed.
Meta is currently the subject of a lawsuit in New Mexico over allegations that it has failed to protect children from online predators. It is also part of an investigation by Spanish authorities into social media companies over the distribution of child sex abuse materials.
“These platforms are jeopardizing the mental health, dignity and rights of our sons and daughters,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a translated post on X.
X and TikTok are also subjects of the investigation in Spain.
More information
If you or someone you know is suicidal, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.
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