Meta adds parental controls to Threads amid safety pressure
Meta is rolling out parental supervision tools for its Threads app globally by year-end, a defensive move to appease regulators as the company faces mounting lawsuits over child safety.
Meta announced on Tuesday that it will introduce parental supervision tools to Threads. The update finally brings the rapidly growing social network in line with the safety features available on the company's other applications.
Through Meta’s Family Center hub, parents and guardians will gain visibility into their teenager's usage. They will be able to monitor daily and weekly average screen time, enforce strict daily time limits that sync across multiple devices, and schedule night-time blocks between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. During these night hours, notifications are muted and auto-replies are activated by default for all teenagers.
The new controls also extend to social interactions and privacy boundaries. Guardians will have the ability to manage who can tag their teenagers in posts on the platform. Furthermore, parents will be able to prevent users under the age of 16 from manually loosening the platform's built-in safety nets, which already include private accounts by default.
For European policymakers and investors, this rollout signals Meta's ongoing effort to manage severe regulatory and legal risks. The company has spent recent years expanding parental controls across Facebook and Instagram. This was done in direct response to fierce criticism from lawmakers regarding excessive screen time, harmful content, and overall teen safety.
This defensive product strategy is playing out against a backdrop of significant legal exposure. Meta, alongside other social media giants, is currently fighting numerous lawsuits tied to child safety. Until now, Threads lacked these specific supervision mechanisms, representing a notable vulnerability for a platform that has accumulated 500 million monthly users since its July 2023 launch.
The new supervision features will initially launch in the United States next week. However, a company spokesperson confirmed that parental controls will arrive on Threads globally by the end of the year. As European regulators continue to enforce strict digital safety standards, the timely deployment of these tools will serve as a critical compliance measure for Meta.
