Instagram announced Thursday that it will begin notifying parents when their children repeatedly look up terms strongly linked to suicide or self-harm.
The notifications will be sent only to those enrolled in the platform's parental supervision program, the social media company's owner Meta said.
Instagram says it already blocks such content from showing up in teen accounts' search results and directs people to helplines instead.
The announcement comes as Meta is in the midst of two trials over harms to children. A trial underway in Los Angeles questions whether Meta's platforms deliberately addict and harm minors. Another, in New Mexico, seeks to determine whether Meta failed to protect kids from sexual exploitation on its platforms.
Thousands of families – along with school districts and government entities – have sued Meta and other social media companies claiming they deliberately design their platforms to be addictive and fail to protect kids from content that can lead to depression, eating disorders and suicide.
Meta executives including CEO Mark Zuckerberg have disputed that the platforms cause addiction. During questioning by the plaintiff's lawyer, in Los Angeles, Zuckerberg said he still agrees with a previous statement he made that the existing body of scientific work has not proved that social media causes mental health harms.
The alerts will be sent via email, text or WhatsApp, depending on the parent's contact information available, as well as a notification through the parent's Instagram account.
"Our goal is to empower parents to step in if their teen's searches suggest they may need support. We also want to avoid sending these notifications unnecessarily, which, if done too much, could make the notifications less useful overall," Meta said in a blog post.
Josh Golin, executive director of the nonprofit Fairplay, was skeptical of the new tool, saying Instagram "is clearly making this move now because the company is currently on trial in two different states for addicting and harming kids."
"Once again, Meta is shifting the burden to parents rather than fixing the dangerous flaws in how it designs its algorithms and platforms," Golin said.
"And all children deserve to be protected, regardless of whether their parents have enrolled in and utilize Meta's supervision tools. If a product is not safe for teens to use without parental intervention, it shouldn't be marketed to teens at all."
Meta said it is also working on similar notifications to parents about their kids' interactions with artificial intelligence.
"These will notify parents if a teen attempts to engage in certain types of conversations related to suicide or self-harm with our AI," Meta said. "This is important work and we'll have more to share in the coming months."
