Meta is rolling out parental supervision tools for Threads across Asia Pacific this week, giving parents and guardians a way to see and shape how their teens use the app through the company's Family Center.
Parents can check how much time their teen spent on Threads over the past week, including the daily average for that period. They can also set a daily time limit, and that cap applies to total Threads time across multiple devices rather than to a single phone or tablet. Access can be blocked on chosen days and during chosen hours.
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Nighttime use gets its own controls. Parents can limit or cut off Threads access at night, and sleep mode mutes notifications and turns on auto-replies by default. The default sleep mode window runs from 10 PM to 7 AM.
Beyond time, parents can decide who is allowed to tag their teen in posts. They also manage and approve certain privacy settings and sensitive content preferences. Teens on Threads sit in Teen Accounts that come with automatic protections such as private accounts and content limits, and for those under 16, loosening any of those settings requires a parent's approval.
Setup runs through a dedicated page at familycenter.meta.com/supervision. Meta says the supervision tools will keep expanding across its apps. The announcement does not name which APAC countries are included, does not give an end date for the rollout, and does not state an age floor for teens beyond the under-16 rule on changing settings.
The launch follows Meta's August open letter urging TikTok and YouTube to join it in supporting teens, and an agreement the company announced with 52 bipartisan attorneys general covering US states, territories and the District of Columbia. Meta framed the agreement as a step toward wider industry standards, including a two-hour daily time limit, nighttime app access off by default, and no notifications during school hours.
Meta has been building out teen safety features across its apps this year. Instagram parent alerts for suicide and self-harm searches were announced in February to begin the following week in the US, UK, Australia and Canada, sent by email, text, WhatsApp and in-app notifications, and they require supervision already switched on through Family Center. Threads itself has been adding user-facing controls, including Dear Algo, which adjusts feeds for three days per request and launched in the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand.
The supervision push lands on a platform that has grown quickly. Threads passed 400 million monthly active users, and it reached 141.5 million daily mobile users, ahead of X at 125 million as of January 7. Threads began in July 2023 as a text companion to Instagram.
