Facebook to introduce measures on its apps to ‘nudge’ teens away from harmful content

Facebook will introduce new measures on its apps to encourage teenagers’ to stay away from harmful content, a company executive told CNN on Sunday.

“We are going to introduce something which I think will make a considerable difference, which is where our systems see that the teenager is looking at the same content over and over again and it’s content which may not be conducive to their well-being, we will nudge them to look at other content,” said Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs.

His comments came after whistleblower and former Facebook employee Frances Haugen testified before the United States’ Congress on October 6 that the social media platform’s products “harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy”.

“The company’s leadership knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer, but won’t make the necessary changes because they put their astronomical profits before people,” Haugen, a former product manager on Facebook’s civic misinformation team, had told lawmakers.

She added that Facebook was aware that its subsidiary photo sharing app Instagram harmed the mental health of teenage girls.

Facebook Vice President Cleggg on Sunday told CNN that the company was planning to introduce a feature called “take a break”, where the company will be “prompting teens to just simply just take a break from using Instagram”.

An internal research conducted by Facebook has also shown that Instagram could affect girls’ mental health on matters such as body image and self-esteem, The Wall Street Journal had reported in September.

Facebook issued a rebuttal of the revelations, but later announced that it had halted work on its Instagram Kids project. This was meant for users under the age of 13.

Also read: Instagram is bad for teenagers – and its owner Facebook has known this for more than a year