The news that Facebook was planning to launch a kids version of their Instagram app called, well, Instagram Kids, was met by a lot of concerns and protests by parents and child privacy advocates. The social media giant has now announced that they are putting this product on hold for now as they try to learn more from their own research as well as consulting with external experts on creating a safer and beneficial environment for its targeted younger users.
This decision comes on the heels of a Wall Street Journal article that leaked an internal Facebook research on the effect of Instagram on teen girls. The report expounds on the toxic effect that Instagram has had on teen girls and that Facebook knew about this since this was the result of their own research. Facebook has, of course, disagreed with the reporting about the findings saying that Instagram has helped make things better for the teenage girls struggling with 11 of the 12 well-being issues mentioned in the research.
But in any case, Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri has cited the WSJ report as one of the reasons why they are pausing Instagram Kids for now. This to give them time to address these concerns from privacy and parenting groups and to be able to “work with parents, experts, policymakers and regulators, to listen to their concerns, and to demonstrate the value and importance of this project for younger teens online today.”
The original plan was to launch a version of Instagram for 10-12 year old kids, with strict parental supervision. They say that kids younger than 13 (the intended age for the main app is 13 years and above) are signing up anyway by lying about their age so why not just create a difference experience for tweens. They will need parental permission to be able to sing up and they will be supervised on things like time spent, who can follow them, who they can follow, and who can message them.
For now though all plans are on hold but they emphasized that they still believe “building Instagram Kids is the right thing to do”. As for teens already on the platform, they will still be working on the opt-in parental supervision tools to help monitor and protect younger users.
