Meta Now Lets You Monitor Your Teens’ Conversations With Its AI-Powered Chatbot.
Meta is officially launching new parental control features that make it easier to monitor teens’ conversations with the company’s artificial intelligence. Meta announced the news in a blog post on Thursday , six months after the company’s initial announcement . But while the additional parental control features look promising, will they be enough to address the larger issues surrounding young users’ interactions with AI?
How Meta’s New AI-Powered Parental Controls Work
According to Meta, parents using the “supervision” feature on Facebook, Messenger, or Instagram now have an “Analytics” tab within their supervision. By selecting this tab, you’ll see all the topics your teen or teens have interacted with their AI bots about over the past seven days. Various topics can be displayed here, including “School,” “Entertainment,” “Lifestyle,” “Travel,” “Writing,” and “Health & Wellness.”
However, these are just the surface of the topics. If you click on one, you’ll see all the different categories covered by that specific topic. So, if your teen was chatting with Meta AI about “Lifestyle,” you can click on that topic to see that they discussed things like fashion, food, and holidays. If their conversations focused on health and wellness, you can click to see that the chats covered fitness, physical health, and mental health. It’s important to note that you can’t see the actual conversations; only the topics Meta AI populated.
Meta states that its AI should return results consistent with a PG-13 rating. Therefore, the bot may refuse to answer some questions, although the topics of these queries will still be recorded in the “Analytics” tab. The company reports that it is continuing to develop tools to alert parents if their teens begin talking to Meta AI about suicide or self-harm. It has also developed a series of questions you can ask your teens if you are unsure about discussing AI with them. These questions are available in Family Center .
Meta’s parental controls are a step in the right direction, but they go far beyond that.
It’s undeniable that today’s children and teenagers are growing up in a world of artificial intelligence , but that doesn’t mean the technology should remain unregulated (or unchecked). Unfortunately, tech companies have been, at best, a bit late, and at worst, maliciously facilitating the policing of AI use with minors. Meta, for its part, initially allowed its AI bots to engage in highly inappropriate conversations with underage users until a viral Reuters report in August forced it to change its policy. Two months later, the company announced new parental control features, which it is now rolling out.
Clearly, these new features and rules weren’t introduced out of genuine concern for Meta’s underage users. Meta’s official policy allowed AI bots to engage in erotic roleplay with children and teenagers, and explicitly allowed bots to respond to racist questions with racist responses. These changes were made in response to instances of abuse, not for the benefit of users.
Still, it’s good that Meta finally allows parents to see the topics their children are discussing with Meta AI, especially if there are any red flags. But why can’t parents disable Meta AI entirely ? Why should teens with Instagram or WhatsApp accounts be linked to Meta AI at all? And Meta’s Analytics tab warns that because the topics are organized automatically, they may be inaccurate, meaning the AI program that summarizes your teen’s conversation topics may be distorting some of them .
Ultimately, the best approach may still be to have an open and honest dialogue with teens about AI use—though I’m not sure trusting the Meta Family Center’s questions is the right move.