Milan, 26 February (LaPresse/AP) – Instagram has announced that it will begin alerting parents if their children repeatedly search for terms clearly associated with suicide or self-harm. The alerts will only be sent to parents enrolled in Instagram's parental supervision programme. The social media platform already blocks such content from appearing in the search results of teenagers' accounts and directs people to helplines. The alerts will be sent via email, text message or WhatsApp, depending on the parents' available contact information, as well as through a notification on the parents' Instagram account. ‘Our goal is to enable parents to intervene if their teenagers' searches suggest they may need support. We also want to avoid sending these notifications unnecessarily, because if we do so too often, the notifications may become less useful overall,’ Meta said. ‘These notifications will alert parents if a teenager attempts to have certain types of conversations related to suicide or self-harm with our AI,’ Meta added, ‘this is important work, and we will have more information to share in the coming months.’ (Continued)