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Tag: teen safety

  • TikTok will now give you badges for limiting your doomscrolling | TechCrunch

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    TikTok is rolling out new digital well-being features like an affirmation journal and a background sound generator aimed at improving the mental health of its users. The social network said it will also give users badges for controlling their TikTok usage.

    The company is redesigning its screen time management page and adding new features to it. These include an affirmation journal with more than 120 positive prompts that let users set your intent for the day, a sound generator that can play calming sounds like rain or ocean waves, and a breathing exercise module. The company said that the page will also feature content from creators who talk about limiting screen time, using parental tools, and customizing their feeds.

    TikTok is also debuting new badges to reward people who use the platform within limits, especially teens. The company said it reviewed academic literature on digital well-being and found that overly restrictive tools can have a negative effect on teens.

    Image Credits: TikTok

    To earn these badges, users need to complete different missions. Users can complete the sleep hours mission by avoiding using the platform at night. They can also use the new meditation tools to get a badge. TikTok is also rewarding people who set a daily screen time limit and use the app within those bounds with a badge. There are other badges for viewing the weekly screen time report and inviting others to complete these missions.

    The company said that during its early testing, it observed that more people visited the new well-being screen compared to the previous version of the screen time menu, with the affirmation journal being the most popular tool.

    TikTok said it will display a link to these tools when someone is using the app at night or when they hit their daily screen time limit.

    The company launched new parental control tools in July, giving guardians the ability to block certain accounts and get notifications when teens upload a public video or a story. In the past month, tech companies including Meta, YouTube, OpenAI, and Discord, have added new safety tools with an aim to increase teen safety.

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    Ivan Mehta

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  • Discord’s Family Center update now lets parents monitor weekly purchases | TechCrunch

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    Discord has rolled out updates to its Family Center, giving guardians more insights into their teens’ usage patterns, including purchases, top interactions, and time spent. The goal is to help parents monitor whether their teen is spending excessive time or money on Discord.

    The communication platform first launched Family Center in 2023 with an activity dashboard showing which servers their teens have joined and a weekly email summary for guardians about their teen’s activity. The platform is now expanding these monitoring abilities.

    Guardians can now see total purchases made by the teen in the last week, including items from Discord’s Shop and Nitro subscriptions (Discord’s premium membership service).

    Image Credits: Discord

    They can also view the total time spent on voice and video calls in DMs, groups, and servers over the past week. Plus, Discord will display the top five users and servers teens interacted with in the last seven days. This comes after other social networks Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat have also implemented restrictions on who can contact teens.

    Discord is also adding new parental controls to the app with settings that can only be altered by guardians. They can now control who can DM their teen and whether sensitive content should be filtered. Guardians can also manage data privacy controls for teens, determining how Discord uses their data, including whether to show them personalized ads.

    Image Credits: Discord

    The company also said that when teens report content on the platform, they now have an option to notify their parents or guardians of their action. However, Discord said it won’t disclose what content was reported and encourages teens to discuss this directly with their guardians instead.

    “The new features allow guardians who have linked Family Center accounts to play a more active role in creating a safer space online for teens while still respecting their privacy,” Discord said in a blog post.

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    In recent months, several companies, including Meta, YouTube, and OpenAI, have rolled out updates to bolster their tools around teen safety. Companies like OpenAI and Character.AI have had to iterate on their AI products to make them safer for teens.

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    Ivan Mehta

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  • Meta previews new parental controls for its AI experiences | TechCrunch

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    Meta on Friday previewed its upcoming parental control features for teens’ conversations with AI characters on its platforms. The features, which will be rolled out next year, include the ability to block certain characters and monitor conversation topics.

    Starting in the coming months, parents will be able to turn off chats with AI characters entirely for teens. This action won’t block access to the Meta AI chatbot — the company’s general-purpose AI chatbot — which will only discuss age-appropriate content.

    Parents will also be able to turn off chats with individual characters if they prefer more selective control. Plus, they will receive information about the topics teens are discussing with AI characters and Meta AI.

    The company said it plans to roll out these controls on Instagram early next year. They will be available in English in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia.

    “We recognize parents already have a lot on their plates when it comes to navigating the internet safely with their teens, and we’re committed to providing them with helpful tools and resources that make things simpler for them, especially as they think about new technology like AI,” the company said in a post written by Instagram head Adam Mosseri and newly appointed Meta AI head Alexandr Wang.

    Earlier this week, Meta said that its content and AI experiences for teens will follow a PG-13 movie rating standard and will avoid sensitive topics such as extreme violence, nudity, and graphic drug use.

    The company added that currently, teens are only allowed to interact with a limited number of characters that follow age-appropriate content guidelines. Parents can also set time limits on teens’ interactions with AI characters. Earlier this year, Instagram announced that it is using AI to identify attempting to skirt age limits by faking their age on the app.

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    In the past few weeks, multiple platforms, including OpenAI, Meta, and YouTube, have released tools and controls focused on teen safety. These changes come amid growing concerns about the impact of social media on teen mental health and lawsuits against AI companies that allege they played a part in teen suicides.

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    Ivan Mehta

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