"Kathryn Montgomery, senior strategist at the US digital rights group Center for Digital Democracy, said: "Facebook claims that creating an Instagram for kids will help keep them safe on the platform.
"But the company's real goal is to expand its lucrative and highly profitable Instagram franchise to an even younger demographic, introducing children to a powerful commercialised social media environment that poses serious threats to their privacy, health and wellbeing."
Of course, we're hearing the usual platitudes about how they'll make it safe and how it's a good thing and so on. Why the heck should we trust a single word that comes from Facebook?
Don't trust it, trust is not the question. Kids almost universally use Instagram and Facebook makes money from that - that will be always true regardless of Facebook making Kidstagram as kids are very used to using fake birthdates[1], and ads can always be targeted to kids based on interests.
Thus the real question is "do I want Facebook to regulate children access to Instagram, their interaction with other children and adult users, and moderate third party content and advertising targeted to children?", which IMHO is a must.
You can make Instagram's discovery algorithm show very extreme child-unsafe content with just few searches and likes; the influencers there (not necessarily targeting children) can have serious impact on a child's mind. And of course, it's a unrestricted private chat, with all the predators such services come with. Also consider cases that might require special treatment like bullying, grooming...
[1] - around 5 years ago Tinder produced an error message if the birthdate was under 18 - which led to all the 13-17 girls using fake birthdates, and mixed them with the general adult public, in large numbers (roughly every fifth profile I saw back then was underage).
"Kids almost universally use Instagram and Facebook makes money from that"
Purely anecdotal but speaking as a dad myself I don't know any kids using Facebook or Instagram. By kids I'm meaning pre-teens here so maybe our definitions differ.
Children should be kept off all these sorts of platforms imho. It's entirely within a parent's control. I therefore don't like FB trying to lure more people into their world with a product like this.
Sure they can make it safer for children but I think this misses the core point. This is not suitable for them however its designed.
I mean children 10 to 15 years old. Also purely anecdotally, nearly all kids from my sister's class had Instagram accounts since age 12. My sister (now 16) hides the app from our parents and has always done so; they wouldn't forbid it but she doesn't want them to see her profile or check her messages. It's just like what you would expect of a 13-18 years old girl - not bad/wrong, not a child anymore, exploring. Access to this kind of profile shouldn't be public by default, friend requests should be limited, and the chat service should be monitored.
I'd rather have Facebook recognize this issue, there will always be vast numbers of underage users on Instagram and simply setting age limit is simply ignorance of the real world complexities of teenage behavior while chasing perfection. How do you hold Facebook accountable to protect children from predators if children are said to be banned? The perfect world of kids not using Instagram won't happen, not even a significant reduction is going to happen, regardless of fines or prison time for Facebook executives - the kids really want to have social network profiles, the only working option would be to liquidate the company - and the kids would simply move to TikTok.
Hmm yes I see your point. Improving safety for kids makes sense as long as they do it without fanfare as a way to get even more youngsters on there. In other words, do it to improve safety not as a marketing exercise. I just don't trust that it's really a safety thing with them, I see it as a trojan horse potentially given what bad actors they seem to be.
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[ 0.79 ms ] story [ 26.3 ms ] thread"But the company's real goal is to expand its lucrative and highly profitable Instagram franchise to an even younger demographic, introducing children to a powerful commercialised social media environment that poses serious threats to their privacy, health and wellbeing."
Of course, we're hearing the usual platitudes about how they'll make it safe and how it's a good thing and so on. Why the heck should we trust a single word that comes from Facebook?
Thus the real question is "do I want Facebook to regulate children access to Instagram, their interaction with other children and adult users, and moderate third party content and advertising targeted to children?", which IMHO is a must.
You can make Instagram's discovery algorithm show very extreme child-unsafe content with just few searches and likes; the influencers there (not necessarily targeting children) can have serious impact on a child's mind. And of course, it's a unrestricted private chat, with all the predators such services come with. Also consider cases that might require special treatment like bullying, grooming...
[1] - around 5 years ago Tinder produced an error message if the birthdate was under 18 - which led to all the 13-17 girls using fake birthdates, and mixed them with the general adult public, in large numbers (roughly every fifth profile I saw back then was underage).
Purely anecdotal but speaking as a dad myself I don't know any kids using Facebook or Instagram. By kids I'm meaning pre-teens here so maybe our definitions differ.
Children should be kept off all these sorts of platforms imho. It's entirely within a parent's control. I therefore don't like FB trying to lure more people into their world with a product like this.
Sure they can make it safer for children but I think this misses the core point. This is not suitable for them however its designed.
I'd rather have Facebook recognize this issue, there will always be vast numbers of underage users on Instagram and simply setting age limit is simply ignorance of the real world complexities of teenage behavior while chasing perfection. How do you hold Facebook accountable to protect children from predators if children are said to be banned? The perfect world of kids not using Instagram won't happen, not even a significant reduction is going to happen, regardless of fines or prison time for Facebook executives - the kids really want to have social network profiles, the only working option would be to liquidate the company - and the kids would simply move to TikTok.