Facebook Will Ask Users To Take A Break From Social Media And Keep Them Away From Harmful Content

Facebook will introduce new measures or features to keep teens away from harmful content. (photo: doc. unsplash)

JAKARTA - Facebook will introduce new steps or features to keep teens away from harmful content and encourage them to take a break from its platforms, such as Instagram.

This was revealed by Facebook's Vice President of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg, at the CNN State of the Union event yesterday. The two new features Facebook picked up came after former Facebook employee and reporter, Frances Haugen, testified before Congress about internal research showing Instagram can have a negative effect on young people's mental health.

"We're going to introduce something that I think will make a huge difference, where our system sees that teens are viewing the same content over and over again and that content may not be conducive to their well-being, we're going to encourage them to look at other content," Clegg said, cited from Reuters, Monday, October 11.

Clegg added that in addition to temporarily halting plans for the Instagram Kids platform and giving parents optional controls to supervise teens, the company plans to introduce a feature, "Something called, take a break, where we're going to encourage teens to take a break from using Instagram," explains Clegg.

Meanwhile, back to the case of the riots that occurred at the US Capitol Building on January 6, when the presidential election was held in Uncle Sam's country, Clegg himself could not answer the question of whether his company's algorithms could amplify the voices of those who carried out the attacks that day.

"It has to be held accountable, if necessary, by regulations so that people can match what our system says they are supposed to do from what actually happened," Clegg said.

Unfortunately, Clegg did not state when the feature would roll out on his platform. However, a Facebook spokesperson said the feature has not yet been tested, but the company will soon do so.

As per the previous statement by the Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri who mentioned that the company is exploring its features right now to make its social media even better.

"We announced last week that we were exploring two new ideas: encouraging people to look at other topics if they think of content that might contribute to negative social comparisons, and a feature tentatively called Take a Break," Mosseri said.

"This feature, where people can put their accounts on pause and take a moment to consider whether the time they spend is meaningful," he added.