Meta Unveils New ‘Nighttime Nudges’ For Instagram So Teens Log Off During Late Hours

It’s no surprise that tech giant Meta has been scrutinized in the past and continues to face major criticism for its apps in terms of the safety they offer to minors.

Plenty of research and bombshell documents have called out Facebook’s parent firm and how it needs to be doing more than rolling out a limited set of tools to combat the issue.

Keeping this in mind, Meta has just unveiled a new feature for Instagram users that prevents teens from using the app excessively at late-night timings.

The rollout comprises a feature called nudges where teens would be prompted to log off when they hit curfew hours. And what better source of reminder or alert than this, right?

The alert will be displayed whenever a minor uses the app for more than ten minutes in a particular area like Instagram Reels or Instagram DMs during odd times at night.

The company mentioned through a newsroom post how the goal was to generate a tool because nothing is more important than sleep, especially when it comes to the younger generation.

In response to criticism, Meta unveils Instagram's teen curfew feature, nudges users to log off during late-night hours.
Image: Meta

The alerts are rolled out during the night hours and present as the newest offering by Meta’s parental control suite. So we first heard about this last year in June and how it was rolling out such features to assist parents in terms of managing kids’ screen times as well as the activity carried out on the apps. Moreover, the firm has also been seen slowly rolling out a host of other tools in the past couple of months.

The tech giant mentioned last week how the goal was to keep better tabs on what was being shown to minors on Facebook as well as the Instagram platform. Such settings ensure there will be a decreased level of sensitive content that children are exposed to through the platform.
The leading tech giant has been facing a lot of criticism in the recent past over how its offerings keep affecting the minds of youngsters. It was slammed with all sorts of lawsuits from a host of state attorneys in general and the overall lack of safeguards in place for youngsters.

Meanwhile, one bipartisan group featuring 33 attorney generals mentioned how the goal was to sue the firm when it proved that the company was targeting minors by marketing addictive offerings. The lawsuit arising in December spoke about New Mexico springing into action when its regulators showed how the apps were breeding grounds for abuse of young minds and that was totally unacceptable.

In the past, Meta has tried long and hard in terms of showing how hard it has worked to curb such issues through the launch of nearly 30 tools and a host of different resources to provide support for both children and parents. The goal was to make sure only safe experiences were taking place on these apps.

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