Meta hosts ‘Digital Suraksha for Teens’ roundtable in Hyderabad with parents, educators to discuss digital safety initiatives
Meta, reaffirming its commitment to youth wellbeing, hosted the ‘Talking Digital Suraksha for Teens’ roundtable in Hyderabad today. The parent-educator forum was held in partnership with 1M1B to raise awareness among parents on Meta’s approach to online safety and share best practices for protecting teen wellbeing in the digital world.
A select group of educators and parents from 10-15 selected schools in the city attended the roundtable to learn more about digital safety initiatives and share experiences of their teen’s social media journey. Meta provided a detailed overview of its safety tools and features that can be leveraged to provide a balanced experience on its apps, Facebook and Instagram. The session also provided the unique opportunity for parents and educators to exchange their experience about managing their child’s social media presence in a mindful way.
Emphasizing the crucial role parents and educators play in a teen’s social media experience, Natasha Jog, Director, Public Policy in India, Instagram, said, “We are constantly working to ensure a safe experience for our users on our apps and prevent online harm. The Digital Suraksha Roundtable is an effort to sensitize parents and educators about the need to stay safe online and sensitizing them about the tools available on our apps to empower them to achieve the same. We also use this opportunity to gain community feedback, which we use constantly to learn and evolve our safety efforts.”
As part of ongoing efforts to strengthen the user safety ecosystem, Meta has already held similar roundtables in key cities such as Delhi, Bangalore, Pune and Jaipur in 2024. The ‘Digital Suraksha Summit’ was organized last year, which was built on a continuous endeavor to provide for a safe and balanced online experience for youth and women. Additionally, Meta has announced a two-year partnership with the Department of Electronics, Information Technology, Biotechnology and Science & Technology (ITBT), Government of Karnataka to empower students across schools and colleges, and educators on information, awareness and education on online safety and digital citizenship.
Over the past three years, Meta has launched 50+ safety tools and features to promote online safety. Recently rolled out features around teen safety include, ‘Night Nudges’, which encourages users to shut down the Instagram app when being used late at night, as well as ‘Quiet Mode’, which help give teen users more control over the time spent on Instagram and what they see. Further, with Instagram’s Parental Supervision feature, parents can view the accounts their child follows, the accounts that follow their children and be more involved in their online experiences. Meta’s ‘Family Center’ also provides parents and teens to find information on how to safely navigate the platforms.