Topics introduce parental supervision tools

Meta is bringing parental supervision tools to Threads, the company announced Tuesday. With the new tools, parents and guardians will be able to view the time their teens spend on topics, set daily time limits, set sleep mode, and manage their privacy settings through Family Center, Meta’s hub for parental control across its apps.

The rollout comes in the wake of growing pressure on Meta from regulators and lawmakers to better protect young users online. The company has spent the past several years expanding parental controls across its apps in response to concerns about excessive screen time, harmful content, and teen safety, and now it’s bringing similar controls to Threads. It’s also worth noting that Meta, along with other social media giants, is currently facing numerous Lawsuits related to child safety.

Given these factors, it’s not surprising that Meta is finally bringing parental supervision tools to Threads, a platform that has… 500 million users per month. The offering comes three years after the launch of Threads in July 2023.

Parents and guardians will now be able to see how much time their teen spent on the platform each day over the past week, including the average daily time spent during the week. They will also be able to set a daily time limit and block access during specific days and hours. If your teen is using Threads across multiple devices, like a phone and laptop, the time limit will apply to the total time they spend using Threads.

Additionally, parents can restrict or block their teens’ access to topics at night, muting notifications and turning on auto-replies by default for all teens from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. Parents also have the option to control who can tag their teens in posts on the platform.

Meta notes that teens on Threads already have built-in protections like private accounts and limits on the content they see. However, parents can now decide whether teens under 16 can change any of these automatic settings to be less strict, the company says.

Parental controls will roll out next week in the US, and Meta plans to bring parental supervision to Threads globally by the end of the year, a spokesperson told TechCrunch.