“That’s not the case.Instagram and Pinterest are in reality very different. “Critics of Instagram Kids will see this as an acknowledgment that the project is a bad idea,” Mr. He pledged to introduce new parental control features for the existing Instagram app in the coming months while the company continues to consider a version for children. He said Facebook’s internal research was used to help guide product decisions, including new features that allow people to pause their account or block certain words that could be used for bullying or harassment. Liza Crenshaw, an Instagram spokeswoman, said the team focused on youth products would continue working on efforts related to teenagers, including “building meaningful tools to help parents and guardians support their teens.” She added that pausing the Instagram youth app was “a collective decision” by the company’s leadership and pointed to comments from Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president for global affairs, who said on Monday that the company planned to release the research “in the next few days.” Facebook last year hired Pavni Diwanji, who previously oversaw the development of YouTube Kids, to build a similar experience for Instagram. It’s unclear what will happen to the team that led the development of the youth Instagram group.
The group published a report in July showing that children as young as 13 were targeted within 24 hours of creating an account with harmful content, including material related to eating disorders, extreme diets, sexualized imagery, body shaming, self-harm and suicide. “Time and time again, Facebook has demonstrated the failures of self-regulation, and we know that Congress must step in,” they said.Ī children’s version of Instagram would not fix more systemic problems, said Al Mik, a spokesman for 5Rights Foundation, a London group focused on digital rights issues for children. The lawmakers added that stronger regulation was needed. In a statement, he and others said Facebook had “completely forfeited the benefit of the doubt when it comes to protecting young people online, and it must completely abandon this project.” Simply pausing Instagram Kids was insufficient, said lawmakers, including Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut and the chairman of the subcommittee holding Thursday’s hearing. On Thursday, Facebook’s global head of safety, Antigone Davis, is scheduled to testify at a Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing titled “Protecting Kids Online: Facebook, Instagram and Mental Health Harms.” Facebook’s internal research showed that Instagram, in particular, had caused teen girls to feel worse about their bodies and led to increased rates of anxiety and depression, even while company executives publicly tried to minimize the app’s downsides. Opposition to Facebook’s plans gained momentum this month when The Journal published articles based on leaked internal documents that showed Facebook knew about many of the harms it was causing. Policymakers, regulators, child safety groups and consumer rights groups have argued that it hooks children on the app at a younger age rather than protecting them from problems with the service, including child predatory grooming, bullying and body shaming. YouTube, which Google owns, has released a children’s version of its app.īut since BuzzFeed broke the news this year that Facebook was working on the app, the company has faced scrutiny. Parents would be able to control what accounts their child followed. Facebook said the “kids” app was intended for ages 10 to 12 and would require parental permission to join, forgo ads and carry more age-appropriate content and features. With Instagram Kids, Facebook had argued that young people were using the photo-sharing app anyway, despite age-requirement rules, so it would be better to develop a version more suitable for them. Regulators, lawmakers, journalists and civil society groups around the world have criticized the company for its effects on society. In recent years, the social network has become perhaps the world’s most heavily scrutinized corporation, grappling with privacy accusations, hate speech, misinformation and allegations of anticompetitive business practices. The decision to halt the app’s development is a rare reversal for Facebook.