Guarding users specifically teens from the social media platforms misuse is an important and necessary responsibility which rests with all the social media companies around the world.

Hence, two days ago, Instagram announced on its official blog that they have created a new feature called “A Parent’s Guide”, a new resource for parents with teens who use Instagram, which enables all Parents and guardians to gain better understanding about what their children are doing on the Instagram platform, and how to control their time in an effective way.

A Parent’s Guide is providing parents and guardians with many features, options, and controls, in order to ensure the community on Instagram is supportive and safe, such as:

1. Comment controls, an option that enables parents and guardians to block unsuitable comments.
2. In addition,  a Parent’s Guide provides them with the ability to report unwanted interactions.
3. A set of effective features that help parents to manage their teens’ time on the Instagram platform.
4. References to the soon to be released activity dashboard to help manage activity in-app.
5. providing an integrated list of questions which enables parents and guardians to identify valuable insights into their teens’ Instagram usage.
6. There’s also a listing of Instagram terms and their definitions that’s considered to be a reference for parents and guardians to be informed.
7. A Parent’s Guide is available to be downloaded in PDF form, which enables users to print out and share, or read offline.

As explained by The Instagram’s Chief Operating Officer, Marne Levine, A Parent’s Guide is designed to focus on three objectives or goals, which includes how to manage privacy, interactions and time on Instagram. Hence, Instagram’s development team have added the basics of the app, and a description of the tools, plus a discussion guide for how parents and guardians can have an open conversation with their teens about Instagram.

This discussion questions were designed in collaboration with education and social media expert, Ana Homayoun, M.A., P.P.S.,In addition, partnerships with several educational organizations like the National PTA, Scholastic, ConnectSafely, National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI), National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA), GLSEN, Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, PFLAG, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Girl Scouts of the USA, and PACER’s National Bullying Prevention Center, in order to create this guide.