Crucial to verify age to make social media safer for children

Age-based safety settings and filters need to be applied to the right accounts

- Irene Tham

Last week, Meta rolled out new parental supervision tools for young Instagram users in Singapore. It was music to my ears, even as I wondered if it was the start of stronger tools to come.

For the first time, I have access to controls to limit my 13-year-old daughter Ollie's daily or weekly E time spent on Instagram, and can E be notified of new accounts following her or those she follows.

To be sure, Mr Philip Chua, Instagram's head of public policy in the Asia-Pacific, said these tools are merely conversation starters and not a silver bullet to address growing fears over the impact of social media on children.

"The tools we are providing today are a basis for conversations between teens and parents that can also be applied to all other social media engagements," he said at the local launch of the tools last Thursday.

Indeed, no technology can replace the mutual trust between parents and their children.

Instagram's supervision tools are premised on this trust: The tools require the young user to agree to being supervised.

I would have to restart my conversation with Ollie to get her to agree to being supervised digitally, even though she had earlier agreed to giving me full access to all her online engagements as a condition for owning a smartphone.

If the tools had been launched earlier, I wouldn't have to go over old ground with her. But this could be another opportunity for us to have another conversation since so much has changed over the past year. After all, the parent-child conversation needs to continue.

I'm also aware that there is no stopping her from starting new accounts without my knowledge if she still wants to keep me out. It's about time I revisited the potential dangers of keeping me out in an updated conversation.