Facebook is tabling “Instagram Kids” for now — but at the same time, Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, says that launching an app for kids under 13 is still “the right thing to do.”
News of the Instagram Kids project came earlier this year, and it was swiftly bashed from several quarters. Critics included more than 40 state attorneys general who raised concerns including research showing social media can be harmful to the emotional and mental well-being of children.
Mosseri, in a blog post Monday, said critics of “Instagram Kids” will see the pausing of the app’s development “as an acknowledgement that the project is a bad idea. That’s not the case. The reality is that kids are already online, and we believe that developing age-appropriate experiences designed specifically for them is far better for parents than where we are today.”
Instagram Kids was meant for tweens (aged 10-12) and will require parental permission to join. The app will not have ads and will be filtered for age-appropriate content and features. Halting the Instagram Kids app “will give us time 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,” Mosseri wrote.
Mosseri also pointed out that competitors like YouTube and TikTok also have versions of their app for kids under 13.
“We started this project to address an important problem seen across our industry: kids are getting phones younger and younger, misrepresenting their age, and downloading apps that are meant for those 13 or older,” Mosseri wrote. “We firmly believe that it’s better for parents to have the option to give their children access to a version of Instagram that is designed for them — where parents can supervise and control their experience — than relying on an app’s ability to verify the age of kids who are too young to have an ID.”