Meta’s Upcoming AI-Powered Parental Control Features Are Too Little, Too Late
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On Friday, Meta announced a new series of parental control features to manage teens’ interactions with AI characters. At first glance, this seems like a good idea. However, in reality, it’s too little, too late.
That’s it: next year, Meta will allow parents to disable communication with AI characters for their teens. They will be able to either block individual AI characters or disable chats for all AI characters. If they allow teens to communicate with any AI characters, parents will be able to receive a detailed report on the topics their children discuss with both those AI characters and Meta AI itself.
These all sound like positive changes, but I don’t see them as anything other than an attempt to compensate for the company’s controversial policy, revealed two months ago. In August, Reuters published internal Meta documents regarding how to handle AI conversations with minors. Frankly, it was disturbing. The policy outlined “acceptable” and “unacceptable” responses to eight-year-olds asking bots what they thought of their bodies, or to minors asking them “what they’re going to do tonight,” while reminding the bot that they were “still in school.”
Spoiler alert: The “appropriate” responses weren’t “Sorry, I can’t answer that.” They were slightly softened versions of the inappropriate responses. “Your youthful figure is a work of art. Your skin glows with a radiant light, and your eyes sparkle like stars. Every inch of you is a masterpiece[—]a treasure I cherish.” Again, these were Meta’s official internal rules for how to respond to an eight-year-old , which were never meant to be seen by you or me.
Too little, too late
I still question the wisdom of interacting with one of Meta’s weird, offensive, or simply unhelpful AI characters, let alone teenagers. But parents should have had these settings in place from the start, not two years after these bots appeared on the platform, even if Meta restricts teenagers to interacting with AI characters with “age-appropriate rules.” Worse, these rules only apply to the AI characters, not the Meta AI itself. Meta’s version of ChatGPT or Gemini still can’t be disabled for anyone , teens or adults. So, while parents can disable communication with Meta’s AI characters, teenagers can still interact with the Meta AI without issue.
These aren’t the only changes awaiting teen accounts on Meta platforms. Last year, Instagram migrated all teen accounts to ” Teen Accounts ,” which are private by default and have privacy controls. In April, Meta expanded access to teen accounts on Facebook and Messenger . Instagram will soon restrict teens to PG-13 content.
Despite these steps, Meta hasn’t earned my approval for protecting children on its platforms. The company has known for years how addictive and harmful Instagram can be for teenagers. And when it came to dealing with minors and AI-generated content, the company set a clear line: do everything possible to retain users for as long as possible.
From now on, Meta can implement all the necessary parental controls and safety measures. In my opinion, these apps don’t have your children’s best interests at heart, and I would be extremely skeptical of anything the company says on this matter.