Facebook plans to make a version of Instagram for children under 13, according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News.
“I am delighted to announce that in the future we have identified youth work as a priority for Instagram and added it to our H1 priority list,” Vishal Shah, Instagram’s VP of product, wrote on a staff board, said BuzzFeed.
“We will build a new youth pillar within the Community Product Group to focus on two things: (a) speeding up our integrity and privacy work to ensure the safest possible experience for teens and (b) building a version of Instagram that allows people under the age of 13 to safely use Instagram for the first time, ” added Shah.
The new project will reportedly be spearheaded by Instagram head Adam Mosseri and headed by Vice President Pavni Diwanji. Diwanij previously worked at Google, where she supervised the creation of children’s products such as YouTube Kids.
Instagram’s terms of use currently prohibits people under 13 from using the app.
“We have a lot to do here,” Mosseri told BuzzFeed. “But part of the solution is to create a version of Instagram for teens or children where parents have transparency or control. It’s one of the things we’re investigating.”
Mosseri said the project was still under development, adding that Instagram does not have a “detailed plan” yet.
“Children are increasingly asking their parents if they can join apps that allow them to keep up with their friends. Right now, there aren’t many options for parents, so we are working to build additional products – like we did with Messenger Kids – that are suitable for children, managed by parents, “a Facebook spokesperson told The Hill in a statement. “We’re exploring bringing a parent-controlled experience to Instagram to help kids keep up with friends, discover new hobbies and interests, and more.”
BuzzFeed notes that Instagram had just published a blog post this week about bullying among its younger teens.
“We require everyone to be at least 13 years old to use Instagram and have asked new users to provide their age when they’ve been signing up for an account for a while. While many people are honest about their age, we know that young people can lie about their age.date of birth, ” Instagram wrote in Tuesday’s blog post. “To meet this challenge, we are developing new artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to help us keep teens safer and adopt new age-appropriate features.”
The new features include restricting direct messages between teens and adults who don’t follow them, urging teens to be more careful with interactions in direct messages, encouraging teens to make their accounts private, and making it more difficult for adults to become teens to find and track.