As part of its measures to keep the community safe, Instagram is introducing some new tools and features for parents and guardians early next year as well as a new ‘Take a Break’ feature for teens.

The first set of tools will be available in March 2022 giving parents and guardians the chance to control how long their kids spend on Instagram by setting time limits. Teens will also have the option to let their parents know when someone is reported on the Meta-owned app so they can tackle the issue together. Apart from this, Instagram says it is working on a new educational hub for parents and guardians which will contain additional resources from experts to help parents understand social media more to help teens.

Instagram has been working on ‘Take a Break’ for a while and the feature is finally launching in the UK, UK, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. In a blog post, Instagram head, Adam Mosseri said the feature was launched “to empower people to make informed decisions about how they’re spending their time.” If a user has been scrolling on Instagram for “a certain amount of time” Instagram will basically tell them to take a break and set reminders of 30mins, 20mins or 10mins time limit going forward. Teens will get notifications of this reminder.

Instagram is also testing a new feature that will let users especially teens bulk delete photos and videos, including the likes and comments they’ve dropped on the app. “While available to everyone, I think this tool is particularly important for teens to more fully understand what information they’ve shared on Instagram, what is visible to others, and to have an easier way to manage their digital footprint,” Mosseri added. This feature will be rolling out in January.

Users will no longer be able to tag or mention teens who don’t follow them or sample them in their Reel Remixes and other content. Instagram began setting teens account to private by default for new accounts earlier in the year and also stopped adults from sending private messages to teen who does not follow them.

All these and many more features for safety will be rolling out in the platform early next year. The timing looks impeccable as Mosseri is set to appear in front of a Senate committee this week to defend the social platform on its impact on teenagers.