Following parent company Facebook's lead on the 'time well spent' movement, Instagram has launched a new resource to help parents better understand what their children are doing on the platform, and how to manage their time.
As explained by Instagram:
"We know many parents and guardians think about what their teens are doing online, and we feel a great responsibility to make sure Instagram is a positive place for them to connect and share. That’s why we’ve created A Parent’s Guide, a new resource for parents with teens who use Instagram."
The new resource - which can be accessed here - includes a range of helpful tools, with notes on managing privacy, how to block comments, and references to the soon to be released activity dashboard to help manage activity in-app.
There's also a listing of questions parents can ask their teens to gain more insight into their Instagram usage, and a listing of Instagram terms and their definitions to keep parents in the know.
You can also download a copy of Instagram's 'Parent's Guide' in PDF form, which you can print out and share, or read offline.
It's a good addition from Instagram, which, as noted, follows on from Facebook's own push to introduce new tools and resources to help parents better understand how to protect their teens from the dark elements of social interactions. Facebook released its own 'Parents Portal' in late 2016, and with growing concerns about misuse of The Social Network, and the ways in which people can be targeted, it makes sense for the company to give this element more focus, to both reassure and remind users of their security options.
And with Instagram currently the fastest growing social platform, more parents, no doubt, have more questions. Instagram usage, with the focus on visuals, has also been directly linked to depression and anxiety, largely through peer comparison and criticism.
This is a key problem that all social networks need to confront, so its good to see Instagram taking positive steps, and providing tools to assist.