‘Instagram for children’ paused amid parents’ fears over child safety
Instagram has paused plans to build a children's version of the social network, the app's boss has said amid a backlash against the proposals from parents and child safety experts.
Adam Mosseri, the head of Facebook-owned Instagram, said he still believed "strongly" the company's aim of creating a version for children as young as 10 was the "right thing to do".
However, children's campaigners described Instagram's project as a "cynical" attempt to hook young children onto its app.
The move comes after the company was heavily criticised when its efforts to build a children's version of Instagram were leaked earlier this year, with the Royal College of Psychiatrists warning it could expose children to "addictive" algorithms.
Announcing the climbdown on Monday, Mr Mosseri, who reports directly to Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook CEO, defended the project, arguing that children were already using Instagram by lying about their age.
'I still strongly believe it is the right thing to do'
In a video, he said: "I still strongly believe that it is the right thing to do. It has to be better to give parents the option to give their tweens a version of Instagram that was designed with them in mind and that was designed to be safe for those between 10 and 12."
Mr Mosseri also revealed that the children's version of the app the company had been building would have had no adverts on it and parents would have had to prove their children were old enough to be on it.
He said Instagram would not look to build more controls for parents into its main app, which has an age limit of 13, rather than create a separate version.
Other social media sites, such as YouTube, also have children's versions of their apps, which are rated suitable for those as young as four.
In recent weeks Instagram has been hit by a series of leaks about how its app can be damaging for teenagers' mental health.
'Parents and children cannot trust Facebook'
Documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal showed that one in seven UK girls with suicidal thoughts interviewed by internal Instagram researchers traced the origin of their damaging thoughts back to the app.
On Monday, Baroness Kidron, a crossbench peer and chairman of children's charity 5Rights, warned that "parents and children cannot trust Facebook" to create a children's app. She called for the company to instead put in proper age checks to prevent young children using the 13-plus app.
Baroness Kidron told The Telegraph: "It is wrong for Adam Mosseri to say it is 'the right thing to build a version of Instagram that was designed to be safe for tweens'.
"Socialising children to share, preen, edit and compete in the name of brand building and ad revenue is cynical."
