Facebook had announced its plans of creating a version of
Instagram exclusively for children under 13, and the social media company is
now receiving a warning from an international coalition of children's health
advocates to not pursue the plan.
An open letter was organized by the youth advocacy
non-profit Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, in which several groups, individual
advocates, and researchers called on Mark Zuckerberg to abandon the plan,
saying that it would put young people at risk, hence doing more harm than good.
The letter also quotes researches, suggesting that excessive use of digital devices and social media is harmful to adolescents.
The letter reads, “Instagram, in particular, exploits young
people's fear of missing out and desire for peer approval to encourage children
and teens to constantly check their devices and share photos with their
followers. The platform's relentless focus on appearance, self-presentation,
and branding presents challenges to adolescents’ privacy and wellbeing. Younger
children are even less developmentally equipped to deal with these challenges,
as they are learning to navigate social interactions, friendships, and their
inner sense of strengths and challenges during this crucial window of
development. Moreover, young children are highly persuadable by algorithmic
prediction of what they might click on next, and we are very concerned about
how automated decision making would determine what children see and experience
on a kids' Instagram platform.”
Some Congress Democrats including Edward Markey, Kathy
Castor, Richard Blumenthal and Lori Trahanh had also reached out to Mark
Zuckerberg last month, voicing their concerns about Facebook’s plan to release a version of Instagram for kids.
Facebook had received similar criticism back in 2017 too,
when it launched Messenger Kids for children between 6-12 years of age. Mark Zuckerberg
was pressured by children's health advocates to discontinue the product.
