Instagram has launched a one stop shop called family center that will provide teen safety tools, parental monitoring and educational resources for parents worried about safety of their children in the application.
The tools which were released on Wednesday, offer parents the ability to see how much time their kids spend on Instagram and set limits on their use.
Parents are also able to monitor accounts the kids follow or are followed back by.
The option is currently available in the United States and will be rolled out globally in the coming months.
Parents who don’t know how to monitor will have an option of watching video tutorials on how to do so in the new supervision tools.
Parents will also be notified whenever their teen shares they have reported someone.
However, teens will need to approve the parent's supervision first if their parents or guardians request it.
This move comes as last year, a Facebook whistle blower Frances Haugen leaked hundreds of internal documents, including some that showed the company was aware of the ways Instagram can damage mental health and body image, particularly among teenagers.
This led to excessive backlash and grilling of executives from Facebook and Instagram in hearings on these and other details from the documents, and Instagram paused a plan to release a version of Instagram for kids under age 13.
