In order to ensure the safety of children, Instagram has now launched a guide for parents. The "Well Being" site talks about Instagram and helps them understand the photo-sharing platform so that they can have a conversation with their children.
The website is updated by Instagram with segments that guide the parents through the application, privacy settings and content controls. It also teaches them how to make an account public or private or how to block other accounts.
It has a list of accounts that they or their kids can follow - accounts that they think uphold high standards and have them looked upon as an inspiration.
None of these features are new, but it looks like it is at least a space open for discussion, for parents, so that they can have a better idea of the world their kids spend so much time in or look forward to spending time in.
The effectivity of this, however, can be measured. Instagram is a platform which is open to all the kids, as a large number of them, if not all, have open access to the social network, along with Facebook.
The act of downloading the app, many times, is not under the consent of their parents; for many, the parents do not even care. The diversities are huge and cannot be underestimated, even though the features it highlights are often easily accessible in-app, which makes it a good point as several users do not really operate those controls. Having the parents know about it could at least be a start.
However, the effectivity of this completely depends on the relation the kids share with their parents and also on how effective is Instagram, under Facebook's umbrella, to make the well-being site more accessible to the parents.
