Meta Unveils Enhanced Safety Tools For Nigerian Teens, Parents

Meta has unveiled enhanced online safety tools aimed at better protecting teenagers on its platforms in Nigeria.

The new safety tools introduce features that give parents greater oversight of their children’s digital activities while strengthening privacy and safety measures for young users.

The safety tools were unveiled during the Meta Nigeria Youth Safety Summit in Abuja.

The summit, co-hosted by the Federal Ministry of Youth Development, showcased Meta’s ongoing investments in youth safety through built-in protections, parental supervision tools, and digital literacy resources designed to help teens navigate the digital world safely and confidently.

It also reinforced the importance of multi-stakeholder collaboration in advancing digital wellbeing and online safety for young people.

At the centre of Meta’s youth safety efforts are Teen Accounts, a reimagined experience across Meta’s apps designed specifically for teenagers, where teen accounts include built-in protections that address parents’ concerns by promoting age-appropriate experiences, limiting unwanted contact, and encouraging healthier digital habits.

The Accounts are automatically enabled for all teens, with built-in protections including private accounts, the strictest messaging settings, sensitive content restrictions, limited interactions (tagging and mentions only from people they follow), daily time-limit reminders after 60 minutes of use, and Sleep Mode between 10 p.m. and 7 am.

However, geens under the age of 16 require parental permission to make any of these settings less restrictive.

Through keynote presentations, a Parents Learn and Brunch session held in partnership with the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, and panel discussions featuring parent creators and participants, attendees explored practical approaches to supporting safer online engagement.

Speaking at the summit, Meta’s Head of Safety Policy for EMEA, Sylvia Musalagani, said the company would continue to build the safety features and tools families need to support young people online.

“At Meta, our goal is to provide teens with safe, age-appropriate online experiences, and events like the Nigeria Youth Safety Summit reflect our commitment to promoting safer and more positive digital experiences for teens.

“With products such as Teen Accounts, Meta is putting the right protections in place so teens can explore their interests and express their creativity in a safe, age-appropriate space,” she said.

Also speaking, the Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Hajiya Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, said child online safety is one of its central pillars, expressing its mandate to safeguard the Nigerian child from technology-enabled violence.

“Children cannot navigate the complexities of the online world without informed adults guiding them because safety begins with parents.

“Safety is a shared tripartite responsibility among parents, technology companies, and government. That is the fundamental premise of today’s summit, a hands-on walkthrough of parental supervision tools and Teen Accounts. We appreciate Meta for the collaboration and for creating a platform for these important conversations.”

On his part, the Minister of Youth Development, Ayodele Olawande, encouraged Meta to make the tools, guides and learning materials from the initiative more widely available so that young people across Nigeria could continue to benefit from the summit.

“I want to thank Meta for this great achievement. At the ministry, one of the things we provide to all Nigerians is the skills to succeed in this digital world while ensuring they are protected against emerging threats.

“We see a strong connection between the objectives of this summit and the goals of our National Youth Data Protection and Awareness Training Programme. We believe that keeping young people safe online is a shared responsibility. Government, technology companies, schools, parents, social organisations, community groups, and young people themselves all have a role to play,” he added.

Meta also provides parents with more ways to oversee their teens’ online experiences through enhanced parental supervision tools. These features allow parents to receive notifications when their teen reports content, as well as gain insights into who their teen has been messaging.

Parents can also set daily time limits for Instagram use, schedule breaks at specific times of the day or night, and monitor the age-appropriate content topics their teen chooses to engage with based on their interests.

Information on Teen Accounts, Family Centre and Meta’s youth safety resources, can be obtained on  Meta’s Family Centre.