Meta is giving parents more insight into how their teens use AI on its platforms. The company said Thursday that parents can learn what topics their children are asking AI about over the previous week on Facebook, Messenger or Instagram — apps owned by the Mark Zuckerberg-run company.

While the move is intended to support the safety of children on popular social platforms, experts said it’s no substitute for good content moderation and safe design, and they warn it could have unintended consequences by reducing teens’ privacy.

The new feature is called AI Insights and is now available for parents who are supervising Teen Accounts in the US, UK, Australia, Canada and Brazil. Meta will roll out AI Insights globally in the coming weeks. Teen Accounts are specially designed experiences for teens on the platforms with stricter default privacy and content settings.

Insights follows on the heels of other safeguards Meta introduced for parents and kids regarding their use of AI. In October, the company said parents could stop kids from interacting with chatbot characters or block specific characters. A character is a fictional being created by AI.

Zuckerberg and his company have been raked over the coals over the past few years when it comes to the mental health of children. Last month, Meta was ordered to pay $375 million after being found liable in a child exploitation case and was also found liable in a California case in which a woman alleged Instagram and YouTube were designed to be addictive to children.

A representative for Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

More than 40 US states filed lawsuits against Meta in 2023, alleging that the company is trying to addict children to its apps and thus contributing to a youth mental health crisis.

How to use Insights

If parents are using supervision for their children on Facebook, Messenger or Instagram, they will now see a tab labeled “Insights,” both in the apps themselves and on the internet.

(Parents can enable supervision in Meta’s Family Center — the process is detailed here — for their kids ages 13 to 17 who are using Teen Accounts.)

After clicking on the Insights tab, parents can see which topics their kids have asked Meta AI about over the past seven days. The company said those topics could include school, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, writing, health and others.

There are also categories within each topic — fashion, food and holidays in lifestyle and fitness, physical health and mental health in the health and wellbeing topic. When parents click on topics, they can see the categories that their kids have asked Meta AI about.

If teens ask AI about suicide or self-harm on Instagram, parents will be alerted, a feature the company added in February.

Meta also said that, in collaboration with the Cyberbullying Research Center, it has developed 11 conversation starters for parents to speak to their kids about AI. Parents can access them via a link on the Insights tab.

In its news announcement on Thursday, Meta said it is trying to “make parental supervision even more valuable for parents.” The company said that the number of US teens enrolled in supervision has doubled over the past year.

Parent surveillance might be harmful

The feature shifts responsibility for content moderation to parents, but it could also be harmful to children in potentially abusive family environments by giving parents a surveillance tool, said Ardath Whynacht, an associate professor in sociology at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada, who specializes in mental health and family violence.

“Parental surveillance is not content moderation,” Whynacht told CNET. “As companies like Meta do less content moderation, they expose children and youth to harm more frequently. It shouldn’t be the parent’s job to make the product less harmful.”

Whynacht, who has worked in prisons and with youth with mood disorders and psychosis, said queer and trans youth could suffer the most from parent surveillance.

“Many turn to digital spaces to find support,” Whynacht said. “Fear of parental surveillance might force children into even more unsafe corners of the web.” 

“It’s a sad fact that kids often need protection from their parents as much as they need protection from harms online,” she added.

More is needed to protect kids

Meta’s new feature is a “step in the right direction,” but it’s not nearly enough of a safeguard, Donna Rice Hughes, CEO of the online child safety organization Enough is Enough, told CNET. 

“Meta cannot be trusted when it comes to teen safety and continues to put profits over safety,” Hughes said, pointing to the company’s lobbying efforts to kill the Kids Online Safety Act in the US House in 2024.

Hughes said parents should use whatever online parental controls are available, such as Meta’s new Insights feature, but also should have frequent conversations with their children about online safety. And control tools should be more robust and effective and implemented by all of Big Tech, not just Meta. “Parents simply can’t continue to shoulder this burden alone,” Hughes said.