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- Meta has announced new online safety features for teenagers and parents in South Africa to manage time spent on Facebook and Instagram.
- It is the first country in Africa to get the feature.
- For more stories, visit the Tech and Trends homepage.
Meta has announced new online safety features for teenagers and parents in South Africa to manage time spent on Facebook and Instagram.
It is the first country in Africa to get the feature.
Opening the Meta Africa Youth Safety Summit 2023 in Johannesburg on 28 June via video, Balkissa Ide Siddo, public policy director for Meta Africa, said safety was a top priority, especially youth safety and well-being.
"This year, we have launched Family Centre, an education hub in South Africa, and are continuing our support for Digify Africa’s digital literacy initiative,” said Siddo.
The Family Centre provides four features to empower parents to support their kids online through its supervision tools; an education hub; healthy habits; and privacy by default.
These new features are in addition to other tools made available within the last couple of years, such as Take a Break, Parental Supervision tools on Instagram, and Quiet Mode.
"Through our policies, controls, resources and programmes, we try to foster a positive online experience for people. We also work with our local partners to help people manage their well-being and safety offline, because it’s not just online," says Siddo.
Sylvia Musalagani, Meta's safety policy manager for Africa, Middle East and Turkey, tells News24 the reason Meta launched first in South Africa was due to the digital literacy gap. Citing the UK, where she resides, she says digital literacy is already included in the curriculum from the moment kids go to school.
"When it comes to South Africa and a lot of the African countries that we cover, you find that digital literacy is a big gap when it comes to understanding what online safety means and having basic digital skills," she says.
"We know a lot of our people are still not connected or don’t have a level of access when it comes to communicating, so it’s important to go to the ground.
"That’s why we work collaboratively with local partners in South Africa to ensure they are going into schools and villages to share these messages using leaflets that we can leave behind, and through radio and TV campaigns to take into account the offline nature of it."
Meta also announced a collaboration with the Film and Publication Board (FPB) and its South African Youth Online Safety Council to develop online safety initiatives within Facebook and Instagram, and for all parties, regardless of location.
Mmaletjema Poto, child protection officer at FPB, tells News24 that the partnership with Meta ihad been a pivotal one, especially when it started the youth council.
Poto says:
Kiru Pillay, chief director at the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies, said what companies like Meta, the FPB, and those who offer online awareness training did was commendable, but what South Africa needed was more education.
"We need education for children and for parents. Parents are not technologists – many of you can run rings around your parents when it comes to technology. Parents are not the most capable guardians to help kids surf the internet," he said.
Pillay cited Unicef’s SA Kids Online Study survey released in 2022 which found that more than 95% of children have access to the internet regularly, and 70% use it without parental consent.
The department had a mandate for cybersecurity awareness, he said. "We have a national cybersecurity awareness portal where we put information to help around cyberbullying and, more recently, we developed a schools toolkit."
The portal cybersecurityhub.gov.za/cyberawareness/ has a Schools Project tab with a series of workbooks, posters, videos and brochures that are available for parents, teachers and children in all the official languages, said Pillay.
He concluded his talk by addressing the school kids in attendance: "I encourage you to start reading about this kind of stuff, and encourage your friends to be more safe online and for you to be more safe."
