A new school partnership program has been launched by Instagram which has been designed for helping educators and teachers for reporting potential safety issues directly to Instagram. With this partnership with schools, this will help to take action on instances of harassment and bullying and give educators and parents further confidence as they would help teenagers navigate online spaces.
Schools signing up to become an IG school partner would be able to issue prioritized reports to Instagram moderation team which would be fast tracked for review. It would also be providing educational resources for helping support efforts for improving digital literacy and keeping young people aware about online dangers whereas school partner participants would also be able to display new banner on their profile and show students and parents that they have made this a focus.
Their banner link to dedicated safety resources. It would be a major connective tool for several teenagers which would make it a focus for cyberbullying. It has been highlighted in Adolescence which is a Netflix series and which has been already viewed around 24 million times within first week of its release. In the TV series, a teenager gets bullied on Instagram which leads to anger and real world violence as a result. This has led to more conversations regarding online safety among parents of teens and several people would be looking for more assurance that enough is being done for addressing concerns before things get out of hand.
The school partnership program from Instagram would help with that and expand reporting capacity of the platform which would give schools further impetus and powers for raising concerns as they see them.
Earlier this year, Instagram has announced partnership with Childhelp for developing a first of its kind online safety curriculum mainly for middle scholars. Educators who signed up for the curriculum reported that they have estimated reaching out to 550,000 middle scholars in the US in the coming year with a goal of reaching out to one million students.
The curriculum has been created in collaboration with leading child safety teaches middle scholars to stay safe online which includes how to spot potential signs of online exploitation and what to do if they or someone they know requires help. This curriculum has been completely funded by Meta and this curriculum is now free and available to all which includes everything educator and parents require from detailed facilitator training to fully scripted lessons with interactive videos and activities.
At times middle scholars prefer to discuss these topics with people closer in age. For this, they have partnered with the team of LifeSmarts who have adapted the curriculum for empowering the high school students to teach it to the young ones. This peer led version of the curriculum is now available.
Parents should feel good about their teens using social media. Teens use apps like Instagram for connecting with friends and exploring their interests and they should be able to do so without worrying about unsafe experiences. Teen accounts have been designed for giving peace of mind to parents. Since being launched on Instagram a year back, limits have been added on teens which are going live, there are more restrictions in DMs and also improved their ability to make sure people are in age appropriate experiences. Supporting parents and helping teens using their apps safely is a responsibility which we take it seriously.
Till now they have placed hundreds of teens in Teen Accounts across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger and now they are expanding it to teens around the world on Messenger and Facebook.
Keep checking out this space for more developments!
