Facebook to halt its Instagram kids project amid pressure from politicians, parents groups

Facebook's move follows concerns about the photo-sharing platform’s effects on young people’s mental health.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri says the social-media service is pausing its work so that it can listen to concerns and do more to demonstrate the value of the kids version. Picture: AFP

Facebook says it will suspend plans for a version of its Instagram app tailored to children, a concession after politicians and others voiced concerns about the photo-sharing platform’s effects on young people’s mental health.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri said on Monday that the social-media service is pausing its work so that it can listen to concerns and do more to demonstrate the value of the kids version, which was to be ad-free and allow parents to monitor children’s activity.

“I still firmly believe that it’s a good thing to build a version of Instagram that’s safe for tweens, but we want to take the time to talk to parents and researchers and safety experts and get to more consensus about how to move forward,” Mr Mosseri said on NBC’s “Today” show.

Facebook’s move follows an article this month in The Wall Street Journal’s Facebook Files series showing that the company’s internal research found Instagram is harmful for a sizeable percentage of young users, particularly teenage girls with body-image concerns. The article prompted a Senate hearing on the subject scheduled for later this week.

“We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” said one slide from a 2019 internal presentation, summarising research about teen girls who experience the issues.

Separately on Monday, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis directed his secretary of state to investigate Facebook in relation to another article in the Journal’s series. That article exposed a company system known as “cross check” that has exempted high-profile users from some or all of Facebook’s rules for behaviour on its platforms. Mr DeSantis said the probe would examine whether the exemptions violate Florida election laws.

Asked for comment, a Facebook spokesman reiterated that the cross check system was designed to help the company accurately enforce policies on content potentially requiring more understanding. He said Facebook has been working to address the issues with the program to improve how it operates.

The Journal’s Instagram article added to concerns about the platform’s effects on young people. Facebook’s plan for a children’s version of the app, which Mr Mosseri said was intended for 10-to-12-year-olds, has drawn criticism this year from federal politicians and state officials over its impact on young people’s mental health. Instagram bars children younger than 13 from its platform but acknowledges that many join anyway.

In May, attorneys general from 44 states and territories urged Facebook to abandon plans for a children’s Instagram platform, arguing that children aren’t equipped to use social media and that there are better ways for them to connect with friends and family. Members of Congress from both parties have also expressed concerns about the plan.

“Facebook is heeding our calls to stop ploughing ahead with plans to launch a version of Instagram for kids,” Sen. Ed Markey (D., Mass.) said on Twitter Monday. “But a ‘pause’ is insufficient. Facebook must completely abandon this project.” Rep. Ken Buck (R., Colo.) also called on Instagram to “abolish the program completely.”

In an interview Monday, two of the state officials who criticised Instagram’s plan in the spring, Massachusetts Attorney-General Maura Healey and Nebraska Attorney-General Doug Peterson, also called on Instagram to fully abandon the project.

Facebook executives say that because children already find ways to skirt the app’s age restrictions, it would be better for them to use a version with stronger safety controls. Mr Mosseri noted Monday that other big internet platforms such as YouTube, a unit of Alphabet Inc.’s Google, and TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance Ltd., have versions designed for children under 13.

The company believes the children’s version “is the right thing to do”, Mr Mosseri said in a statement. “Critics of ‘Instagram Kids’ will see this as an acknowledgment that the project is a bad idea. That’s not the case.”

Mr Mosseri and Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg have said that social media can help children form connections.

Instagram also plans to offer more parental controls to families with older children, Mr Mosseri said. The controls would be optional and would allow parents to monitor and shape their teenagers’ experience with the platform. Instagram had been developing some of those tools for the now-paused kids’ platform, he said.

“Parents of kids of all ages are looking for more ways to supervise and control their kids’ experiences online,” Mr Mosseri said. The controls could give parents the ability to approve whom their teenage children can message and follow, he added.

The Journal’s Sept. 14 article about Facebook’s internal research on Instagram was part of a series showing that Facebook knows its platforms are riddled with a variety of flaws that cause harm. In addition to the Instagram research, the Facebook Files articles — based on a review of internal documents and interviews with current and former employees — also reported on problems with Facebook’s content-moderation policy for high-profile accounts, its efforts to tame angry content and its programs to bar criminals such as human traffickers and drug cartels.

Josh Golin, executive director of a group called Fairplay that advocates reducing companies’ interactions with children, praised Instagram’s decision and said it was evidence of rising concerns about the platform’s harms.

“What you saw here was a really well-organised outcry from so many different circles: experts, advocates, states’ attorneys general, parents,” Mr Golin said. “That, combined with the really disturbing revelations in The Wall Street Journal, created so much pressure on Facebook that they understood that they really risked drawing the ire of politicians and doing long-term damage to their brand.”

Leaders of the US Senate Commerce Committee’s consumer-protection subcommittee said last week they would hold a hearing this Thursday to question a senior Facebook executive about its platforms’ effects on young people’s mental health.

On Monday, Facebook said it would make public the internal Instagram research that was the subject of the Journal’s reporting.

“Of course people should judge for themselves, so we’re just making sure that all the Ts are crossed and the Is are dotted so that we can release it both to Congress and then to the public in the next few days,” Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, said at a conference hosted by the Atlantic magazine.

Facebook’s head of research, Pratiti Raychoudhury, said in a blog post Sunday, 12 days after the Journal’s article ran, that the Journal’s reporting mischaracterized the company’s findings about Instagram and teens. Ms Raychoudhury said that body image was the only area, out of a dozen, where the company found teen girls who reported struggling with the issue said that Instagram made it worse. Facebook’s research shows many teens “feel that using Instagram helps them when they are struggling with the kinds of hard moments and issues teenagers have always faced,” she said.

A Journal spokesman said, “We stand behind The Facebook Files. None of the company’s defences have cited a single factual error — and in keeping with our standards, we gave Facebook ample time and space to comment before publication.”

The Journal’s article noted that for most teenagers, Instagram’s effects can be manageable and at times positive but highlighted those areas where the company’s own researchers flagged negative effects on at-risk users.

The Wall Street Journal