People can connect with friends, join ‘groups’ (places where people communicate with other users, usually about a shared interest) or follow an organisation’s ‘page’ (where organisations post information and communicate with other users). They can also send private messages using the Messenger app, which are end-to-end encrypted (only the sender and receiver can see the message).
A user can create a story (a set of pictures and videos that last 24 hours). Each user has a ‘feed’ showing information shared by ‘friends’ (people who they are connected with), pages, groups and advertisers, that the app thinks the user will like. Users can also watch videos, including very short videos (‘Reels’), livestream, game, shop, date and create events on the app. Meta’s digital assistant is called Meta AI. On mobile devices, Facebook users can use Messenger to text chat with Meta AI, ask for information or create content to share.
Facebook profiles can be public or private. If a user’s account is set to private it means the user can select who will see the information they share.
Facebook defaults to some more private settings for accounts under 18. For example, their accounts are automatically set to ‘private’ and location sharing is turned off by default (however this can be changed).
Facebook does provide some parental oversight. With agreement from their child, parents can set up ‘Supervision’ for their child’s Facebook and Messenger accounts, to see their friends and contacts, who they’ve chatted with and blocked, some of their privacy settings and their content preferences (e.g. to reduce spam or violent content). Parents can see how much time their child spends on the app and set limits and breaktimes. They can also set breaks for their children, but they can’t see the contents of their children’s chats or searches.
User safety settings also include the ability to control who can see what they share on Facebook, who can contact them and how much time they spend using the app. They can hide the number showing how many ‘likes’ people’s posts have received. Users can create a pin for making payments and control how their information is shared with advertisers and search engines.
