00:02:55.460As always, I have so many questions about how to handle kids and screens and social
00:03:03.920media and what as parents we can be doing.
00:03:07.700So I'm really curious to talk to you about what are the latest things that Meta is doing to help parents of teens out and not just teens, but tweens.
00:03:19.180I mean, any individual who is getting a phone who happens to be a minor, what are the best tools for parents to be using these days?
00:03:29.240I think the first thing you just said about the phone really resonates.
00:03:33.000So I have two teenagers now. My son turned 13 about a month ago, and I have a 15-year-old daughter. And the phone is honestly a bit of a bone of contention in the household.
00:03:46.860So look, we've been doing a lot at Meta. And I think first and foremost, what we've been doing over the last couple of years is really having very deep conversations with parents and really getting into it with parents as to what are their biggest concerns, trying to really understand it.
00:04:07.380Because if you if you just look at, you know, kind of mainstream news or TV or you're listening to your politicians and your policymakers, you have a bit of a skewed vision about what it is that parents are really worried about.
00:04:21.060So we decided to just go directly to parents and have those conversations.
00:04:27.000And this came across in all of our research in the US with parents, but also in the UK. I'm based in London and across the globe, which I think there really is, there were trends. So that really helped us and helps us to build the right solutions for parents.
00:04:44.520So there were three things. One was parents are worried about who their teens are able to be contacted by when they're using social media. So I focus specifically on Instagram. So I'll probably speak about Instagram more than any other platform, but who their teen might be able to be contacted by when they're using Instagram. That was a key concern.
00:05:06.720the second one was about the content that their teenager might be seeing so what is the kind of
00:05:13.240content that they are being recommended because that's really important you want to make sure
00:05:17.140that the content that your your young person is coming across is appropriate and also what kind
00:05:21.940of content is my is my young person searching for right so i think parents want to have more
00:05:26.360insights into things like that and then the third thing that came up over and over again was the time
00:05:31.400so and again and this goes beyond social media it's like what is the right amount of time that
00:05:36.120my teenagers should be spending on the phone.
00:06:33.120we launched what's called teen accounts on Instagram.
00:06:36.120And I think some of your listeners, I hope some of your listeners who do have teenage children will have experienced this because what we've done with teen accounts is we have defaulted it on for all teenagers under the age of 18.
00:06:52.140It's just completely automatic. If you have a teen and we know that your teenager is under the age of 18, they are defaulted into our most restrictive settings. And those settings are who can contact them. So they cannot be contacted by people that they don't know or are already connected with the content that they see. So they're restricted to see the most like the least sensitive content on our on our platforms on Instagram.
00:07:16.140So can I can I ask a question about that?
00:07:19.400When we're talking about the content, what would be restricted for a teen then?
00:07:35.020So they are they are the standards with which we make sure that content that we would consider to be violating is not shown and cannot be posted on our platforms.
00:07:44.840So I hope I can give parents some reassurance that the kind of content that you would imagine you shouldn't see on our platform, you don't see it.
00:07:53.000We remove that kind of content before it's even posted and that violates.
00:07:59.780And we will give people, let people know that we've removed that content.
00:08:03.440And if it's really, really serious content, it's a one strike and you're off the platform.
00:08:08.660But when we talk about sensitive content, it's different.
00:08:10.620So it's content that isn't necessarily, isn't violating our community standards, but it's content that we wouldn't want a teenager to see because it's sensitive.
00:08:20.540And the example I would give is trailers for movies.
00:08:24.920So a movie might be kind of 15 or 16 rating or over 18 rating.
00:08:31.460And that trailer might be fine to see if you're a 19 year old.
00:08:34.120So The Godfather, for instance, you know, it's got violence in it.
00:08:37.460You know, it's got extremely bad language in it, things like that.
00:08:39.800Like we don't want teenagers to see that kind of content and we certainly don't want to be recommending that kind of content if you're under the age of 18.
00:08:46.680So sensitive content would go in there.
00:08:48.600Anything to do with dieting, we would make sure that would be considered to be sensitive content.
00:08:54.060Again, I think parents do not want to think that their teenager is coming across content that is promoting or in any way dieting because that's, you know, I'm the mom of a 15-year-old girl.
00:09:06.520Well, it's definitely something that you worry about with any teen, whether it's a boy or a girl.
00:09:10.760So I would say to people, anything that you think is sensitive, we think is probably sensitive as well.
00:09:16.840And we just try to make sure that we're not recommending that kind of content to any young person who's under the age of 18.
00:09:23.240And what we've done with teen accounts is that if you are in that teen group, you cannot change any of those restrictions that we set for you without asking your parents permission to do so if you're under the age of 16.
00:09:36.520And that's really one of the biggest changes that we've made and I think is industry leading across the whole industry, which is that we've really put parents in the driving seat. So we've defaulted all of these restrictions on for your teenager. But then if they want to change them and they're in that younger teen group, they can't without asking you as a parent if they can change any of those settings.
00:09:59.940And then we really hope that means you're going to have a good conversation offline with your teenager about why they want to change any of those settings and really put you as a parent into that conversation.
00:10:13.140So one of the big questions parents constantly ask me is, how easy is it for teens to get around this?
00:10:21.900That question is less interesting to me because I think teens will get around everything.
00:10:25.900I mean, I smoked a lot of cigarettes and drank a lot of 40s when I was a teenager, even though my parents are like, don't do it.
00:10:44.980So I think one of the wonderful things is that we were all teenagers.
00:10:48.780and so every single person who works at meta was a teenager and all of those people who are working
00:10:54.760on developing these types of tools and products we remember being teens and we remember the kinds
00:11:00.720of tools and tricks that we used to try to do to get around so like fake IDs and as you say you
00:11:06.200know you might be smoking you don't want your parents to know all of those things which now
00:11:08.900you have your own children you're kind of horrified so there's a few things one of the
00:11:14.700things that we are really um uh comforted by is so we launched teen accounts back in september of
00:11:22.540last year and um we released some data around how it's doing because i think parents rightly are
00:11:29.240saying oh how's it going is it actually you know is it working um and one of the things that we
00:11:34.460learned is that 97 of the teens in that younger category i talked about this 13 to 15 year old
00:11:42.360age group where you cannot change any of these settings without your parents' permission.
00:11:46.94097% of those teens have kept the most restrictive settings. So I think that's really interesting
00:11:52.880because I think it means a number of things. You can read into that a number of things. One is
00:11:56.900we think teens actually really appreciate being in more restrictive settings.
00:12:02.020Teens quite like rules. And so they haven't tried to change those settings. That's the first thing.
00:12:08.320Or secondly, maybe they haven't noticed. Maybe they haven't noticed they've been put into these
00:12:12.240most restrictive settings. And that's okay. That's pretty good. We don't mind. So we're
00:12:20.080definitely comforted. And I think that gives us some kind of positive feedback that it's working.
00:12:26.880I think there's another big issue, which is around knowing and understanding the age of those who are
00:12:32.820using social media and kind of using the internet more broadly and using our platform. So that is
00:12:39.280something that we've been really really working on so we you know this works for those that we
00:12:44.740know we're under the age of 18 and we ask when you first join instagram to give us your age so we
00:12:50.580we work on stated age but then as i said we've all been teenagers we all know that maybe teenagers
00:12:55.660might lie about their age so we do a bunch of things we've been investing a lot in this in this
00:13:01.600in ai in this space so we we do try to age assure so if a teenager if we if we know that you're under
00:13:09.060the age of 18 you've told us when you first joined that you're under the age of 18 and then you try
00:13:13.120to change your settings to over the age of 18 um but but the machine the system can see that you're
00:13:21.440it's not your it's not your birthday we will ask you to age verify um and so we we send you a little
00:13:28.340pop-up on instagram and it says hey you're trying to change your data your your date of birth can
00:13:33.440you either upload a video selfie so we use a an external provider called yoti um and they have
00:13:40.700they have uh produced this extraordinary ai technology which is you upload a video selfie
00:13:46.400and it can it can kind of read from the shape of your face and the shape of certain features on
00:13:53.160your face it's they don't take the photograph per se but they just look at some of the features on
00:13:56.960your face to then ascertain how old you are and they have a 98 um uh success rate of being able to
00:14:04.580to understand whether you're under or over the age of 18 so we use that and we also for teens
00:14:10.940that don't want to use that we we you can upload a piece of id so uh we we will know and again our
00:14:17.140our teams are very that's human review so like a human being locks at that and make sure that it's
00:14:21.780not fake id um and make sure that it's it's genuine and then you can change your date of
00:14:27.100birth of if we think and believe that you are the age that you're telling us you are
00:14:30.760so that's that's the first thing we do we also look at signals so um if you've told us that
00:14:36.940you're over the age of 18 but all the signals that we can see on your account are telling us
00:14:41.160otherwise um so you might be you know all of your friends might have wished you a happy 15th
00:14:46.660birthday or you know we can see that most of the followers that you have and those you're
00:14:51.240following are all around the same age but you're telling us that you're a different age they're
00:14:54.880all signals that that that we would pick up and then we would ask if you could verify um go through
00:14:59.880the same age assurance process and then the last thing that's happening and it's right now in the
00:15:05.440us um is that we're testing what is effectively age prediction technology so this is that we're
00:15:12.880looking across this across the whole of instagram at those who may not have told us their correct
00:15:19.180age and looking at those signals that I talked about. And there's a number of signals that we
00:15:23.060look at. And if we have a high precision that you're not the age that you've told us you were,
00:15:29.380what we're doing now is we're just placing those teens into our most restrictive settings. So
00:15:34.520basically placing them into the same restrictive settings that we have for teen accounts and kind
00:15:39.100of taking quite a precautionary approach because we do want to get age right and we want to try
00:15:44.400to understand it as much as we possibly can but it's it's hard it is I'm not going to lie because
00:15:49.340it's it's a difficult space because teens do try to circumnavigate it sometimes you know
00:15:55.800for nefarious purposes sometimes they just put in the wrong date of birth and
00:15:59.400and there's all sorts of reasons that that might happen but we are we're investing really heavily
00:16:03.940in trying to get this right. I want to take a quick break and when we get back I want to dig
00:16:11.320in a little bit about what teens are thinking about these kinds of restrictions.
00:16:22.900I don't think I can be your friend, Isabella said. Rebecca's stomach flipped. This is the
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00:16:41.320Okay, we are back. There's recently been an all-out ban or there's recently been talk of an all-out ban in Australia for anyone under the age of 16 for them not to be on social media. What do you guys think about that?
00:16:57.220Yeah, so we've been obviously really engaging with the government of Australia around this. And look, you know, it's an important debate, right? I think we absolutely think that's an important debate to be had. And different cultures and different governments take different approaches to these types of things. And so we do, we absolutely do. We're involved in the conversation, we're involved in the debate.
00:17:22.960And I think if you take a step back, which I think is important because teenagers now, you know, if you're a 13 or 14 year old now, you are a teen who's grown up in this.
00:17:37.100They have grown up their entire lives with technology.
00:17:42.140And that's very different to the way I, you know, I still had analog phones and, you know, VHS players.
00:17:48.000But these are teenagers who, when they were, you know, three and four, or babies even, they had monitors in their rooms.
00:17:55.040They had iPads when they were much smaller.
00:17:57.820Someone I spoke with the other day was talking about the fact that, you know, toddlers nowadays, they're seeing technology from the earliest ages.
00:18:06.900And even when they're crawling on the ground of the kitchen, you know, you'll have a digital, you might have a Wi-Fi connected washing machine and dishwasher.
00:18:16.100And so these screens are everywhere. This is just how they're growing up. So I do think that has to be recognized. I think there are some huge benefits to connection. And I think teens tell us, and we know from lots of research, that teens really, really do appreciate that connection. And we see it on Instagram. It's like, you know, Instagram DMs is where teens are just chatting to their friends.
00:18:37.940are in the same way I would have come home from school and as soon as I finished my homework I'd
00:18:42.700be on the phone to my friends and all my brothers would be you know would be trying to get on the
00:18:46.220phone to do the same thing with their friends so that's what teens are doing nowadays that they're
00:18:50.240doing it with social media and they're sharing and they're having fun and they're having joy with it
00:18:54.800so I do think that shouldn't be lost in this conversation is that there isn't only negativity
00:19:00.000around social media there is a huge amount of joy and connection and positivity that happens
00:19:04.500and comes with with with instagram for for certain um but i think there's a conversation
00:19:09.740about out there about you know what is the right amount of time that my teen should be spending
00:19:13.580and are they connecting safely and all of those types of things which is honestly it's it's really
00:19:19.300important that parents are having these conversations and thinking about it but we
00:19:22.320think there's a way of doing that where you are you are nurturing your teen particularly your
00:19:27.800younger teen when they're first starting out on that in that space when they're 13 and they have
00:19:32.420instagram for the first time that they're able to have a a protective experience and then as they
00:19:38.500age up they can have a slightly different experience and then when they're over the
00:19:41.660age of 18 obviously they're they're adults and they should have a different experience again
00:19:45.500we think there's a way of doing it where parents you know parents are kind of providing support
00:19:51.540and helping their teen as they're entering that new world without it being banned from them because
00:19:56.540i mean we'll you know we'll often find anything that gets banned people get really interested in
00:20:00.960whereas this is actually this is part of who they are and this is part of how they're growing up
00:20:04.980and we've seen research around that some that most teenagers in the UK but also in in the US have
00:20:13.60040 or 45 apps on their phones and and that sounds really scary as a parent but if you think about it
00:20:21.420it's you know it's their school app so lots of schools now use apps to do homework
00:20:26.160it could be travel apps for them getting to and from school trains and buses etc it's their maps
00:20:32.440it's social media it's their messaging services it's their it's their sport club apps I mean this
00:20:38.340is just this is their normality in which they are living and my view of this is that we should be
00:20:44.340helping and supporting and nurturing your your teenagers as they're entering that new world
00:20:48.440I mean that's a better way of doing it than than an outright ban and and knowing and understanding
00:20:53.780what is the right age I think is is also really hard to do we just for the parents feel a bit more
00:20:59.500in control of that time yeah I mean I think it's tough because every kid is different you know I
00:21:06.100talked a lot with my friend Taylor Lorenz who doesn't think a lot of the controls are actually
00:21:12.740fair for the young teenage entrepreneurs who are trying to build a following on on Instagram and
00:21:20.300then I talked to other parents who are just nervous that their kids are going to be preyed
00:21:24.780on by pedophiles on these accounts. So I think it is such an individual choice. How can parents
00:21:35.600customize something for their kids? We just did an episode on Skinny Talk and the Skinny Societe
00:21:43.520on on instagram which is a group encouraging not necessarily teenagers but not not teenagers
00:21:51.260to eat as little as possible to lose weight and i have a lot of parents who are really worried
00:21:58.120about teen girls and eating disorder content and they want to know how can i keep my teen from this
00:22:06.720when this is the thing that they are seeking out yeah and this really really resonates because
00:22:13.280we we've spent a lot of time thinking about those issues as well um so your question about
00:22:20.120what can parents do to be more involved i think it's it's really important because what we heard
00:22:26.840from all of that research and those conversations we had directly with parents and through
00:22:32.020organizations like the national pta in the u.s is um some parents want to be very involved and
00:22:38.160some parents don't and they they're worried because they don't have the time and they don't
00:22:42.840maybe understand Instagram and so they're that makes them really nervous because they don't
00:22:47.500know the platform whereas other parents actually might use Instagram and they feel quite comfortable
00:22:50.860but they want to go that step further so what we've what we've done with teen with teen accounts
00:22:55.680on Instagram is um so as I said we've the most restrictive settings if you're if you're under
00:23:00.960the age of of 18 you can't change them if you're in that younger in that younger teen group but
00:23:05.980then parents can can absolutely go a step further so um they can set a parental supervision and so
00:23:12.140if you want to change about your teen wants to change any of those settings um they have to set
00:23:15.940up parental supervision but you as the parent can also just go in and set a parental supervision
00:23:20.340with your teenager and then you will get more insights into what your teen is doing and speaking
00:23:26.800with when they're using instagram which we've had really great feedback from parents about this
00:23:32.220something like 95%, 94% of parents in the U.S. that we surveyed said that they feel like
00:23:39.620teen accounts make them feel safer when their teen is using it, which is really good to hear.
00:23:45.180So in the supervision tool, there is a dashboard. And I'd really encourage parents to go in and
00:23:53.200set it up and have a look. And on the dashboard, it gives more insights into the time your teen
00:23:58.440is spending. So it gives you things like, it gives you the time, the amount of time they're
00:24:01.700spending so you can see that and you can also set limits you could even go so far as to set a
00:24:06.800complete limit so you could say hey i only want you on instagram for 10 minutes a day
00:24:10.720or i only want you on instagram for an hour a day whatever works for you and your families you can
00:24:15.100set those limits using the supervision tool um you can also see insights into who your teenager
00:24:21.760is messaging when they're using instagram and we had a long debate about this and we brought experts
00:24:27.300in to help us help guide this conversation because some parents said to us they wanted to see
00:24:32.720the dm so the direct messages that their teens are sharing with their friends their backs and
00:24:38.840boards with their friends and other parents said no i feel like that's going too far that's kind
00:24:42.820of opening the diary and having a look without without permission so oh my god those parents
00:24:47.340are so sweet i would totally open my kid's diary of them so yeah no very a very very mixed view
00:24:56.800from parents so what we did was we've given insights so you can see as a parent you can
00:25:01.600go into the dashboard and you can see the last over the last seven days who your teenager has
00:25:06.400been direct messaging on instagram so you can see the names of all of those accounts you can see the
00:25:11.340messages themselves but you can see the names of all of those accounts and then we hope that that
00:25:15.220will instill a conversation offline to say hey i see this account who is it uh do i know them are
00:25:21.120they from school from sports whatever you can have that conversation and you have that information
00:25:25.320easily available and every you know you you get that dashboard every seven days it'll update and
00:25:30.880show you who your teen has been messaging over the last seven days it will also the dashboard
00:25:35.800also shows you who your teen is following and who's following them which is really important
00:25:39.900again that you have a good sense of of who your teen is is following is important um in the u.s
00:25:46.300we've got interest picker so this is like a topic selector so you can go in uh your teen can go in
00:25:51.600And you can go in with your teen and you can select particular topics that you want to see more of in your in your feed on Instagram and in recommendations.
00:26:00.520So if your teen is particularly interested in a sport or, you know, they're studying for particular exams, you can you can go in and you can set some of those topics together and you can also see who your teen has blocked as well.
00:26:13.760So if your teen blocks someone, they might have been a victim of bullying and harassment on Instagram. Unfortunately, these things happen online as well as offline. They might block someone and that will pop up and so the parent will be able to see that as well.
00:26:28.340So, yeah, we've gone quite deep in terms of the insights that we're giving parents.
00:26:33.200We hope without going so far as to break that privacy of the teenager and that particularly as the teenager is aging up, that the parent has those insights, can have those conversations, but not so far as to make teenagers feel uncomfortable.
00:26:48.660So that's, you know, that 97% of teens who have sort of not changed our most restrictive
00:26:54.580settings, that does give us some indication that actually teens are appreciating it.
00:26:58.720And we really hope they do, because we want them to come to Instagram and have a positive
00:27:02.260We want their parents, probably even more importantly, to feel like Instagram is a
00:27:06.880place that they feel their teen is going to be safe when they are online.
00:27:10.960what kinds of things is meta working on right now to protect kids from ai from from the kinds
00:27:19.720of fakes being being created by ai and misinformation yeah so we again really
00:27:27.080important because ai is such going to be such a big part of our teens lives in the future right
00:27:32.300um and and they use it brilliantly and really innovatively that's definitely something that
00:27:37.140that we that we see um so we take the same approach across all of our meta platforms and
00:27:42.780i think where teens are right now with teen accounts so we back in i want to say april so
00:27:48.240just a couple of months ago we extended teen accounts to facebook and messenger um which was
00:27:54.740which was great um and and we're looking at you know making sure that teen accounts and all the
00:27:59.380restrictions and protections that we have protections we have on teen accounts is is
00:28:04.060replicated across the rest of the family of apps, as we call it, because you want parents to know
00:28:10.100that when their teen is coming to any of our services, they're going to be having a safe
00:28:13.320experience. So that's certainly top of mind. And the teams that are working on each of these tools
00:28:18.940and products, they're talking to each other. They are having these constant conversations
00:28:23.780to make sure that we're kind of cross-fertilizing. Two things that are quite new that we've
00:28:30.340included in teen accounts that I think are probably important for parents to be aware of,
00:28:33.800Because the idea with this is that it won't stand still, that we will be continuing to improve upon teen accounts.
00:28:41.740So two of the products that are tools that we've added into the teen account experiences in the last little while is one is your teenager can't go live on Instagram without getting your permission to do so.
00:28:54.320So going live on Instagram is kind of a broadcast mechanism.
00:28:58.680and you talked about your you know your friend who's got a teen who who is you know is a creator
00:29:05.440and wants to use it to to connect and maybe campaign on issues we see that a lot with
00:29:10.020teenagers that they really are incredibly active um and we don't want to restrict that but if they
00:29:16.180want to go live now they do have to get their parents permission to to do so and that'll again
00:29:20.620be the to the parental supervision tool and then the second um tool that we've added in i think
00:29:26.640that parents will will want to hear is we have a filter in in dms which filters out inappropriate
00:29:34.200images so it could be nudity images um and we filter that out um and you can you can change
00:29:39.980that again if you're in that younger your younger age bracket and again we're kind of taking it for
00:29:44.540a quarter of your approach here because like nudity sounds really scary and it could be and uh and we
00:29:50.840can talk about issues around sextortion because i think that's really important um but it could
00:29:55.540be to something benign you could be sharing you know photograph of your brother or sister on the
00:29:59.120beach or you know in the in the bath or whatever but we don't want we again we're taking that much
00:30:04.560more precautionary approach when it comes to those teenagers um and we have a filter turned on that
00:30:09.340you can't you won't be able to see that kind of imagery um in your in your dms and i think again
00:30:14.740it's just taking that step further that if you if you're a parent and you know um that that filter
00:30:21.880is sitting there in your in your dms when you're using instagram and what about protecting kids
00:30:29.480when their images are posted online from people using those photos however they want to use those
00:30:36.100photos i mean we know there's so many freaks out there that lift these kinds of pictures and then
00:30:41.260do whatever they want with them on child porn sites so again like really really important
00:30:47.600um questions so yeah we take first of all we take a zero tolerance to anything that involves child
00:30:53.820exploitation uh on on our platforms and obviously always have and we work incredibly closely with
00:30:59.240law enforcement um to make sure that we report that kind of content um i think one of the things
00:31:05.340that parents are concerned about um is is teenagers who might inadvertently share intimate
00:31:14.400images themselves um so you talk you're talking about somebody who might see a photograph on
00:31:19.480instagram and then try and share it we have lots of ways that we look for um potentially suspicious
00:31:27.040behavior so that we don't allow that kind of content on our platform we don't allow the kind
00:31:32.240of content to be shared in our platform we've got really strict rules around it um but we do
00:31:37.000have we do you know look for what could be potentially suspicious behavior and so if you
00:31:43.180certain signals. So if you are an adult, and we know that you're an adult, and you've tried to
00:31:49.440follow or connect with a bunch of teenagers, and they've blocked you, or you sent a number of
00:31:55.680requests over a certain period of time, all of those things that they're all really important
00:32:00.160is we pick up those signals. And why, you know, while that might not necessarily be,
00:32:05.380you know, violating our policies, it is suspicious behavior. And so we make sure that anyone who
00:32:12.380who demonstrates that kind of suspicious behavior we ensure that they're not able to connect with
00:32:18.060teenagers and so again on the when you're in the teen account setting on instagram or
00:32:22.960defaults on instagram you cannot be contacted by anyone that you don't follow you're not
00:32:30.260following back that you don't have a you know a connection with already we stop anyone who
00:32:36.020could be potentially suspicious from being able to connect with even being able to find teenagers
00:32:41.480on our platform that's all part of the protective experience that that we build because it is really
00:32:46.400really important and you know listen teenagers are also very very aware of this i think this is
00:32:52.080one of the things that's really interesting about this kind of digital native community is i talked
00:32:56.920to my my teenage daughter about this i mean they're brilliant at blocking and seeing that kind
00:33:01.240of behavior and they talk to their friends about it um we work with lots of brilliant civil society
00:33:08.360organizations um who help us to understand this as well so we've got in-house experts who are from
00:33:14.340law enforcement they're from you know former police former um cia you know law enforcement
00:33:19.860across the globe who really know and understand this kind of behavior um and they work with us
00:33:25.660to make sure that we're we're on top of the most kind of up-to-date trends of how this how how
00:33:30.560individuals might try to use our platforms and then we're building the tools to make sure that
00:33:33.880we find and remove that kind of, that kind of behavior, those kinds of individuals. It's really,
00:33:38.280honestly, it's one of the most, probably the most important thing we do at Mecca.
00:33:42.240Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, I freak out all of the time. I don't post pictures of my kids
00:33:46.580nearly as much. They're still on my account sometimes. They are a part of my life.
00:33:51.600But especially with my daughters, I'm much more sensitive to it. Little things, I'm like,
00:33:57.440oh my gosh, they're so cute. They're sitting there eating ice cream. But then in my head,
00:34:00.900i'm like oh my gosh there's a little too much thigh a little too much five-year-old thigh in
00:34:05.700this picture and there's creepy men out there who might do something with this picture i mean it's
00:34:09.700just the grossest thought to have to have nothing it will isn't it is we it is it is of course and
00:34:14.920it's like every parent's worst nightmare of course it is um so one tool i would shout out about is
00:34:20.420close friends i don't know if you use close friends on instagram but it's um when you go to
00:34:25.060share um on instagram you can it's a little green first of all you can build a close friends group
00:34:31.260so you go into your settings and it's it's a tool it's called close friends and you can build your
00:34:35.060close friends group and it's you know by the very name it's like friends and family and the people
00:34:39.920that you you know obviously you're a public figure so lots of people will be following you who you
00:34:43.780don't necessarily know and as you say you wouldn't necessarily want to share public content with your
00:34:49.540children with them so um yeah close friends you can set it up you can add whoever you want to
00:34:56.120your close friends group and then you can share those kinds of images because it's fun it's joyful
00:35:01.080particularly if you've got family they're living in different parts of the country
00:35:03.440and feel good about it because you know you know if you are worried you know that it's just your
00:35:08.640close friends group that are only going to see those only going to see those photographs and
00:35:11.900you know we all i use it i use it loads um there are certain things i'm really happy to
00:35:16.400post publicly and then there are certain things I only want my you know my closest friends and
00:35:20.500family to see and so it's uh I would just give a shout out to the close friends too because it's
00:35:25.420it's it's wonderful and I think it will give you a bit more comfort um that the right people are
00:35:31.020seeing your your children's content yeah yeah I mean that is one of the things that scares me the
00:35:36.560most I'm actually not that afraid of my kids using social media right now I'm happy for the
00:35:43.460restrictions that exist i also think and i'm a person that already places how they use digital
00:35:49.960tools generally and i plan to be all up in their grills i mean like i said i am the mom that would
00:35:55.400read their diary like don't leave that around if you don't want me looking at it uh and i fully
00:36:00.800plan on on going through their phones i'm just more concerned about the kids that don't have
00:36:05.460the parents that are going to do that yeah and it's it's again it's a really important one because
00:36:12.700not every teen or preteen is living in an environment where either their parents are
00:36:19.380as supportive or nurturing and kind of breaks your heart to think about that, but it's the reality.
00:36:25.380We're also a global platform, so we have to recognize that there's many, many millions
00:36:29.840of teens around the world who are using our platforms in different ways. So we were very
00:36:34.660mindful of that, which is why we made teen accounts, the defaults, automatic. So the teen
00:36:41.280doesn't opt into it the parent doesn't opt into it we we just place all teens into the teen account
00:36:46.780experience and they're in those most restrictive restrictive settings it's really only if the
00:36:52.840parent wants to get more involved that they can um through the supervision tool but they don't have
00:36:59.200to you know and i think that's something that's important the parents know is that it is it just
00:37:04.060happens behind automatically behind the scenes and it's been like technically we've we've moved
00:37:09.420tens of millions of teens into the teen account experience and and things are just really
00:37:13.980practically things like um so a teenager might have been on instagram previously say you know
00:37:19.520this time last year before we launched teen accounts um and they may have had a public
00:37:24.960account on instagram say you've got a 14 year old son and he's on instagram and previously he had a
00:37:32.040public account on instagram um he has been automatically moved into a private account
00:37:38.520on Instagram. And what comes with a private account is, you know, obviously additional
00:37:42.380privacy. People can't contact him. People, you know, he has to follow and follow back
00:37:47.160before he has a connection with someone on a private account. And again, he cannot change
00:37:53.960that private account to a public account if he's under 16 without getting the parents
00:37:58.020to approve him being able to do so. So it's very, very practical that we have moved teens
00:41:12.160But more broadly, I just wanted her to be able to use the phone
00:41:15.420to be able to contact us um and and send us messages if you know she was on the bus home
00:41:21.540and things like that um but look I felt I felt huge pressure and and that pressure was coming
00:41:29.600from my teenage daughter it was coming from other parents um and and I think it's I think it's really
00:41:37.780hard because some parents were okay to have their teenager it would give their teenager a phone
00:41:42.720earlier um my daughter would come home and say you know x y and z has got instagram and i honestly
00:41:49.420would be going and like finding them and removing them from instagram and telling their parents that
00:41:54.020they really there there is a reason why we ask for you to be 13 and we ask for your age and
00:41:58.300we talked all the the ai we're using now to be able to find those who have lied about their age
00:42:04.700in the past um but look i i absolutely have felt the pressure that i think every other parent feels
00:42:10.200around it um and then so for my son he was a bit older and and again we talked earlier on about
00:42:18.520teenagers being so different you know you as you as the parent you know your teenager better than
00:42:22.760anyone else and so um my my son is i hope he never hears this but he's just a bit more immature
00:42:29.400in his thinking um and he has been um he loves gaming so he's got roblox and um we gave him
00:42:37.720like an xbox a couple of years ago so he's been gaming and um i really found with him that he was
00:42:43.880he would he would get very engrossed in it basically and so i thought oh you know what
00:42:50.540i can see whereas my daughter was very good with with rules uh likes rules i gave her very strict
00:42:56.660rules about the amount of time she was able to spend on her phone and we have a drawer at home
00:43:00.800you're supposed to put your phone in at the end of the day and when you're not using it and things
00:43:04.000of that and I could you know she was she was great with us whereas I could tell immediately with my
00:43:09.180son that he was not going to be great with us and and so we did restrict him more and we waited a
00:43:14.980bit longer before we gave him the phone partly because he actually could walk to school he
00:43:18.880didn't have to get public transport so there are some like really practical things about about
00:43:23.840these you know when you're a parent about giving your your your teenager a phone and the ages you
00:43:28.740do it um i would really urge parents to have the conversation with your team and we have
00:43:36.040a bunch of brilliant resources in the the meta family center and to help parents to have those
00:43:43.460conversations and we've worked with connect safely and in in the u.s and national pta to really
00:43:49.580help to give parents the resources that they need to have those conversations because i just i think
00:43:54.740all parents no matter where they are they feel a real pressure um to either buy the phone or to
00:44:01.460then allow your teenager to have to have messaging apps or social media apps or any other apps i think
00:44:06.700they you feel that pressure very early when you're a parent yeah i mean that makes sense to me right
00:44:12.700and i kind of you know think about it the same way that when certain friends of mine when i was
00:44:18.820growing up didn't have a phone in their room. And so I couldn't talk to them at night privately.
00:44:24.300And I had a phone in my room and I talked to my friends who did have a phone more than I talked
00:44:29.100to my friends who didn't have a phone and then we're closer and then people get excluded because0.99
00:44:32.480kids are dicks. And so like, you know, it does seem like it's going to be a really tough call,0.97
00:44:39.500but then the difference is there wasn't a possible pedophile lurking in the phone or
00:44:45.420some freak trying to sell my kid a weight loss group yeah and look I think I think you know as
00:44:52.740as parents like I said you you know your teen best and I think that there are ways that you can
00:44:58.980have really honest conversations with them without scaring them um because that's one of the things
00:45:04.840I with my daughter when she first had Instagram and um I would be asking her all the time I'd say
00:45:10.180who's who's direct messaging you can have a look at your direct messages you know and I was trying
00:45:13.600to I was trying to be that parent who was giving her a bit you know they're growing up trying to
00:45:18.040give her a little bit of autonomy at the same time being absolutely on it and she would she
00:45:22.760would laugh and she said mom like it's just my friends I'm not being contacted by anyone I don't
00:45:26.800know and I'd be like what if you are you must tell me you can block them you know I was going through
00:45:31.180as you would imagine someone who works at Instagram I know all the tools and I would talk to her about
00:45:35.280it I do think the vast majority of teens are having an absolutely like just fun time when they
00:45:39.580using our apps but as a parent you want to make sure that you are guiding them and that they know
00:45:46.700that they can come and talk to you if they do have a bad experience and I think that's
00:45:51.660really important because what I what I do worry about is that parents worry and then if their
00:45:58.940teenager comes to them and they have seen something inappropriate or they have maybe
00:46:05.080message something or or like you know they might have been the bully you know i think we all love
00:46:10.360to think that our teenager would never bully or be mean to another team but i don't think that i
00:46:16.560think i have one child who will bully um despite despite what i do i just i see it i see it in
00:46:22.500their eyes and you know you know your team better than anyone in the world so um you know you want
00:46:28.000that if your teen does do something that they regret that they can come and tell you and that
00:46:33.280you don't fly off the handle as we'd say in Ireland um that you you're able to have a calm
00:46:39.180conversation and you can talk to them about it and they can have because I think they'll make
00:46:44.060mistakes like all teenagers make mistakes but I think those mistakes feel bigger and and frankly
00:46:49.100they are bigger because if you post something that you regret you know you're really worried
00:46:53.780it's out there and as a parent you're really worried it's out there and you're worried that
00:46:57.100you know all of those things so I think being able to have conversations with your teenager
00:47:02.220and that your teenager knows that no matter what they can come and talk to you and that you will
00:47:06.520help to make it right and that there are you know there are tools there are people out there there
00:47:12.840are you know either within the app we have a bunch of brilliant resources and organizations so if a
00:47:21.000teenager posts content that you talked about you know skinny so if a teenager was to post
00:47:26.740content that violates our policies around eating disorders. So any kind of glorification of an
00:47:34.000eating disorder is against our policies. If a teen wants to post something, that's tough, right?
00:47:40.420Because, you know, we would remove that and we would let them know why we've removed it.
00:47:44.720That can feel very stigmatizing, particularly when you're a teenager and everything feels
00:47:48.860incredibly sensitive, obviously, when you're a teenage girl at 14. But what we do is we actually
00:47:53.420send resources um and those resources have been written with um with organizations that are
00:48:00.100experts in the space about hey that content violated our policies you might want to talk
00:48:06.220to someone you might want to connect with someone you might want to chat to a friend so really
00:48:09.820trying to speak the language of of and to teens if they post something that they shouldn't have
00:48:14.660posted because there are certain things we don't want to stigmatize but also we don't want to see
00:48:18.580that kind of content on our platform so it's I'm not saying it's easy it's not it's a fine line
00:48:23.900because we want to we don't want to stigmatize teenagers and I think they have a tough time
00:48:29.560you know I think it's it's it's that that age for all of us you know they're kind of 13 14 15 16
00:48:35.400for some of us it's years of our lives for others of us it's a miserable time and and we want them
00:48:42.000and they come to Instagram to have a positive experience and often if you're miserable and
00:48:45.940you can find a community on instagram or somewhere else that's brilliant but we we know that we have
00:48:51.540a really really important responsibility um for teens when they're using our platform
00:48:55.600i have one last question because i've talked to a lot of parents who say they have seen thing
00:49:02.340they have seen things that have bothered them that have concerned them or their kids have been
00:49:06.720messaged by someone that they don't that they think is suspect or or or another child has posted
00:49:13.780you know some kind of revenge porn and they haven't been able to get through to meta to get
00:49:19.900it taken down they said it's been really hard what is the best way for parents to try to work
00:49:25.160with the company on those kinds of issues yeah um first of all i i'm really sorry if any parent
00:49:31.920out there has tried to connect or contact us when it comes particularly when it comes to teens
00:49:37.220because um we do want to have an open conversation we want them to be able to do that um well and
00:49:43.620safely so there are a number of things that we do so you talked about revenge porn that is
00:49:49.260incredibly important because we have a zero tolerance as you would imagine i think as i
00:49:53.960knew everyone would hope um for sharing that kind of content and if that kind of content is shared
00:49:59.040we um that content then you can go to a number of organizations so take it down in the in the u.s
00:50:06.000which is a brilliant organization where we will share with them what is basically it's not the
00:50:12.920actual image it's a hash of the image um so because the image itself is obviously incredibly
00:50:18.660sensitive so we we create a hash we share a hash of that image um and then that runs through the
00:50:23.960whole of the internet and and take it down will will help to remove it so again if that happens
00:50:30.060to a teen or indeed to an adult there are organizations out there that we will connect
00:50:34.320them with um in order to be able to get the help that they need so i would strongly encourage
00:50:38.980anyone if you've had a bad experience please report it we have we do have reporting mechanisms
00:50:44.720and it's actually very very detailed so we go through like kind of a bunch of questions about
00:50:50.440why you're reporting this particular piece of content and then we will then understand and be
00:50:54.740able to review it for exactly why it's being reported to us um the other thing i would really
00:51:00.300encourage parents to do is go into the family center the the meta family center because
00:51:04.060And even if you just spend 15 minutes on a Friday morning after school drop, grab a cup of coffee in a coffee shop and just Google Meta Family Centre and all of the resources are there.
00:51:16.540And there's tips and tricks and we've got experts who've helped us, but also there's just a list of all of the resources that are available to parents to, as I say, block or report content to us that their teenagers shouldn't have seen or shouldn't have shared on any of our platforms.
00:51:34.060and where are these things they're they're within the app or do you go on the website because i know
00:51:40.180i've had a hard time finding them when i've wanted to report issues so when you so if you want to
00:51:44.400report it's it's uh there's so on anything so you can report a direct message you can report a post
00:51:51.020you can report story or real anything you can report on instagram so first of all just be
00:51:55.380reassured that you can report anything and there are three little dots on the top of your uh the
00:52:02.920feed or the image or whatever else it might be the the instagram dm there are three little dots
00:52:07.980just click on the dots and then it'll it'll ask you a bunch of things and one of them will be do
00:52:11.620you want to report this and then it will go through a flow and ask you questions about why you want to
00:52:16.180report that so that's in the app itself the other alternative is you go into the settings so the
00:52:22.280settings you find it on instagram is your your profile picture on instagram is click on your
00:52:26.800profile picture and it will bring you into your profile and then you click on settings um and
00:52:31.780And then there are, you know, it's it is quite easy, I think, to find, shows you all the different tools, privacy, safety, et cetera, tools that you can jump into.
00:52:40.660And then, yeah, we have this the family, the Meta Family Centre, which is a place that we've just brought everything together for parents and for teens as well.
00:52:51.260But we've brought everything together for parents in the Meta Family Centre.
00:52:54.520And you can either find it through our settings, but honestly, just just search for it in any search engine and you will you'll be directed to the Meta Family Research as the Meta Family Center.
00:53:05.600All that information will be there for you.
00:53:08.720Are there any things within the teen restrictions and teen meta that make it less addicting for teens?
00:53:17.000Because I will say it is it is it seems purposely addicting for grownups.
00:53:21.000so there's a couple of things that we've built um to really respond to that so one of them is
00:53:27.860instagram recommendation reset which we launched last year um and this again is responding to
00:53:34.360you might have a bunch of recommendations you might have been interested in something in the
00:53:38.580past you're not interested in in in the future going forward so you can do a recommendation
00:53:42.840reset which means that it just clears all of your your feed effectively um and your explore
00:53:50.480on instagram and you can kind of start again um and i think that that does speak to people who
00:53:54.600might have got gone down a kind of a rabbit hole and want to get out of it and want to just have
00:54:00.020a completely new and different experience and start start afresh so and that's gone is that
00:54:04.220the response to that has been really really good um oh my gosh so anyone can do this so i could
00:54:10.180reset and stop getting stop getting served like glp1 and protein grifters yes you can reset your
00:54:18.480you can absolutely reset your your algorithm the recommendations on on instagram yeah i mean
00:54:24.100this might be the greatest thing i've learned for a week yeah yeah no it is and as i said it's i
00:54:29.960think much appreciated particularly by those who might have as i said you might look it could be
00:54:34.720benign you might have just been really interested in netball at some state in your life and then
00:54:38.180you know the recommendation system is is giving you more and more information on that and you're
00:54:42.640not no longer interested in it but it might be something else it might be that you did have an
00:54:46.520eating disorder and you've recovered from your eating disorder and you do not want to see any
00:54:49.900kind of content that's related to eating disorder content that is not against our policies,
00:54:53.920just any kind of content, you might say, no, you know what? I want a complete
00:54:56.620digital refresh. And you can do that. You can do that on Instagram.
00:55:01.360I love that answer. That wasn't even the answer that I knew I was looking for,
00:55:04.140but now I'm about to do it literally right now. So say goodbye to the tradwives and these protein1.00
00:55:10.120grifters and you know you can also i should say you you know you can you can go into you're not
00:55:16.780interested on so when you're when you get a piece of content that's recommended to you and look
00:55:21.200we want the content that is recommended to you to be um as i said to be time well spent um and so
00:55:29.180we do try as much as possible to um engage you and like to personalize your experience and actually
00:55:35.200people really really appreciate that people do want to see content that they're interested in
00:55:39.760engaged in. And I think it's important. You don't want to spend your time just kind of
00:55:43.800sifting through content that has no kind of connection to you. And so you can say,
00:55:48.640the algorithm can be negative, but actually the algorithm also really tries to connect with things
00:55:53.720that you're engaged with. So I think that's important, but you can then go into the post
00:55:58.500and you can say, I'm not interested. And that's really important because that helps us to
00:56:02.720understand the content that you may or may not be interested in. And then we'll ask you some
00:56:07.400other questions. Are you seeing this content too often? Do you think this content is offensive? So
00:56:11.540we do actually ask you other questions to really try to understand why you might not want to see
00:56:16.440certain types of content. And that then helps to build a recommendation system that actually
00:56:20.960really works for you for the time you're spending on Instagram. Look, at the end of the day,
00:56:25.980I just want more content of otters putting rocks in their skin pockets and fat bears being fat.