Facebook will develop a new Instagram app for children between 6 and 13-years old.
The announcement was made by Vishal Shah, Instagram’s vice president of product, on the employee’s message board on Thursday.
According to Buzzfeed, Vishal said the following: “I’m excited to announce that going forward, we have identified youth work as a priority for Instagram and have added it to our H1 priority list.”
“We will be building a new youth pillar within the Community Product Group to focus on two things: (a) accelerating 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.”
The new app is to be overseen by Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, and Pavni Diwanji, the former head of Google’s YouTube Kids.
Mosseri has recognised and addressed the increase of children owned Instagram accounts and the major risks they attract.
The National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) noted that in 2017, there was a 200% rise in recorded instances of targeting and abusing children on Instagram.
Having identified those risks also from the perspective of a father-of-two, Mosseri tries to keep his children’s identities secret and blurs their faces before he uploads any photos of them on the app.
“We have to do a lot here, but part of the solution is to create a version of Instagram for young people or kids where parents have transparency or control. It’s one of the things we’re exploring.”
However, the control parents have is limited, as it seems impossible for the app to recognise and block users that are under 13-years-old. Moreover, they cannot be forced to use the children-friendly app, therefore it is hard to foresee how successful Facebook’s new project is going to be.
Nevertheless, the risks children and teenagers face on social media are major and any shot at tackling those problems is very much needed.
In other social media news, a new Zoom Escaper app has been unveiled.