Makati: Meta on Thursday formally launched the revamped safety features for minors on its social media platforms and held the Screen Smart digital literacy program to help educate the public on these features. In a launch event at Fairmont Makati, Meta Asia Pacific head of safety policy Malina Enlund said the revamped features are concrete platform-level contributions to the Philippines' digital safety agenda.

According to Philippines News Agency, the initiative responds to growing demand among families, educators, and policymakers for practical approaches to protecting young people online. Among these safety features are the updated Instagram Teen Account that limits the content that children 13 and above will be able to see and engage with. These revamped settings build on the protections already in Teen Accounts, which are turned on by default automatically for users aged 13-17, and parents decide if teens under 16 can change any settings to be less strict.

In particular, teens will need to accept new followers before their content can be seen, only messages from people they follow or are connected to will be allowed, and they can only be tagged or mentioned by people they follow. Moreover, parents will be able to set daily time limits for the app, and the new 'sleep mode' will mute all notifications overnight and send auto-replies to direct messages.

Meta is taking a proactive approach to teen safety by embedding protections directly into platforms by default, giving Filipino parents greater peace of mind that their teens are interacting with age-appropriate content from the moment they log on. Several government officials and private sector representatives attended the event, including Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Secretary Henry Aguda, Council for the Welfare of Children Undersecretary Angelo Tapales, Stairway Foundation child protection specialist Ysrael Diloy, and National Youth Commission Chair Jeff Ortega.

The Screen Smart digital literacy program aims to convene stakeholders for conversations about youth online safety and is meant as Meta's follow-through and complement to the DICT's Digital Bayanihan Safety Summit.