Writes Dionysus, Content Writer, Headline Diplomat eMagazine, LUDCI.eu
Numerous international child protection experts and advocacy groups are calling on Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg to abandon his plans for a version of the Instagram online platform for children under the age of 13 – Instagram Kids.
Instagram is harnessing young people’s fear of missing out and wanting peer approval, the organization, Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), based in Boston, said in a letter, as also reported by Al Jazeera.
The signatories of the letter, which is presented in PDF format and made public, include child protection organizations from the USA, Canada, Africa, and Australia.
The group believes that the platform will expose young users to great risks. “The platform’s relentless focus on appearance, self-expression, and marketing poses a challenge to the privacy and well-being of young people,” said the signatories, citing physical and psychological risks associated with excessive use of social media.
Another factor is the concern about sexual abuse when children and adolescents post pictures of themselves online.
The background
According to Instagram’s terms of use, you can only create an account and log into Instagram from the age of 13. Girls and boys under the age of 13 should not normally be allowed to create an account. Of course, the parents have to decide individually, because every child is different.
However, Facebook has admitted that kids under the age of 13 are on Facebook, according to The Guardian. Simon Milner, the policy director for Facebook in the UK and Ireland, admitted that controlling the age categories of users was “tricky.”
According to him, “We haven’t got a mechanism for eradicating the problem [of underage users]. Facebook does have a rule that users have to be over 13, as does YouTube, which not a lot of people know,” he said at an Oxford Media Convention.
According to an extensive study by the UK’s Office of Communications (Ofcom), half of 11 and 12-year-olds have social media accounts, despite many social media platforms’ age restriction.
Instagram is especially popular with girls. The app is mainly used for “private.” Young people mostly follow people they know personally, look at their pictures and videos and comment on them. According to the Ofcom study, few parents are aware of social media platforms’ age restriction as eight out of 10 parents whose kids use Snapchat, or Instagram indicated so. And at least four out of 10 parents express they wouldn’t restrict their underaged children from using the platforms.
Research conducted by MinorMonitor, a platform that advocates for the proper monitoring of children on Facebook, revealed that up to 38% of Facebook accounts were owned by children of age 12 and under.
And according to the Ziff Davis Network, a business tech news website, 74% of parents are concerned about their children’s safety on Facebook platforms. 56% of the 1,000-parent sample also expressed concerns about sexual predators finding their kids on the platform.
Late in 2019, a joint international campaign by an International Group of Human Rights NGOs referred to Instagram as a “predator’s paradise.”
“Since July, we have collected hundreds of samples of sexual, predatory comments on underage girls’ Instagram posts. What we’ve found shows that sexualization and harassment of underage girls on Instagram is rampant,” a press release from the campaigners reads. “By giving adults unfettered access to children and facilitating the transmission of sexual comments—including requests for sexual content—from adults to children, Instagram is complicit in the harm of underage girls.
“If technology and social media companies are going to allow minors on their platform in any capacity, then they must provide adequate measures to keep children safe from sexual predators,” said Lyn Kennedy of Collective Shout campaigner.
Instagram, like all Facebook platforms, has little control of the problem. Before now, the only solution the platform proffered is that if any adult discovers a minor using its platform, they should advise them to delete the account. Instagram also says under 13 users can be reported by filling out a form.
Instagram’s plans for preteens
Knowing young users are going around its policies on age limit, Facebook is currently looking into introducing a children’s version of the network for children and adolescents under the age of 13, according to Variety. This was first reported on March 18, earlier this year.
The background to this is that many young people give the wrong age and thus create accounts on Instagram, for example, despite the age limit.
A representative from Facebook has confirmed the project. “We’re exploring bringing a parent-controlled experience to Instagram to help kids keep up with their friends, discover new hobbies and interests, and more,” company spokesperson Joe Osborne said to Variety.
According to Osborne, “Increasingly, kids are asking their parents if they can join apps that help them keep up with their friends. Right now, there aren’t many options for parents, so we’re working on building additional products — like we did with Messenger Kids — that are suitable for kids, managed by parents.”
It’s not the first time Facebook will be designing a platform for kids. In 2017, the group launched a version of Messenger for kids, Messenger Kids.
According to Facebook, “the new app [Messenger Kids] makes it easier for kids to safely video chat and message with family and friends when they can’t be together in person.”
It continues in the press release saying, “millions of parents are part of Messenger community, and they asked us for controllable solutions that let them message with their children.”
“We heard that they were looking for better apps for their children to use, and from there, we worked directly with parents and kids along with experts in child development, online safety, and children’s media to help build our first app for kids. Messenger Kids is a standalone app that lives on kids’ tablets or smartphones but can be controlled from a parent’s Facebook account,” the release reads.
Criticisms of the new project
The parent company Facebook sees a safe space in a child-friendly version of Instagram, but child advocates are warning against it. In an open letter, they ask Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg to give up his plans for an Instagram for children. Around 100 groups and individuals signed the message, including the CCFC.
According to the signatories of the petition, led by the organization in Boston, which is making a stand against Facebook’s new plan for a kid version of Instagram, a children’s version is still the wrong way to go.
“A growing body of research demonstrates that excessive use of digital devices and social media is harmful to adolescents,” the argument against Facebook’s plan began.
According to the petitioners, “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 group also fears that Facebook’s popularity in the quest for branding, self-presentation, and appearance may affect children, as they cannot manage the challenges.
“The platform’s relentless focus on appearance, self-presentation, and branding presents challenges to adolescents’ privacy and wellbeing,” the group says. “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.”
The letter continues further: “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.”
According to the group, while collecting family data valuable to Facebook and cultivating new generations of Instagram users may be a prospect to Facebook, it’s going to increase the vulnerability of children to manipulative and exploitative trends of predators and Facebook.
“Adolescent girls report feeling pressure to post sexualized selfies as a means of generating attention and social acceptance from their peers,” the letter continues. “Additionally, social media platforms including Instagram are rife with child sexual abuse materials and online exploitation of young users – in 2020 alone, Facebook and Instagram reported 20 million child sexual abuse images. Instagram has faced criticism for failing to respond to reports of exploitation in a timely manner.”
The group argued further from another angle, saying “children between the ages of ten and twelve who already have Instagram accounts are unlikely to switch to a babyish version of the platform after they have already experienced the reality.”
Facebook’s defense
Facebook has, however, defended its plans. In a statement made by spokeswoman, Stephanie Otway, Facebook says, “the reality is that children are online.”
“They want to connect, have fun, and learn with their family and friends, and we want to help them do it in a safe and age-appropriate manner,” says Ms. Otway, as reported by the NYTimes.
Family checklists for parents of kids using social media
While it doesn’t look like Facebook will be going ahead with its plan for kids on Instagram, parents can safeguard their children by doing the following:
- Rules for use should be discussed together. The rules should be clear and understandable. This applies in particular to the content, the frequency of use, and friend requests.
- Whether you have a family profile or your profile: privacy should be activated in the app settings. This ensures that strangers do not have access to photos and data without permission.
- To protect users, Instagram offers various reporting and blocking options. Content and profiles can be reported, and profiles can also be blocked. Parents should be aware of these possibilities and discuss them with their children.
- If the parents are users themselves, they should be good role models concerning the duration of use and the publication of images.
- Parents should look at different profiles together with their offspring: How calculated is a snapshot of stars? How much is staged? How much image processing is there? Are certain products being advertised inconspicuously?
- The daughter/son can understand and accept rules of conduct better if, for example, cyberbullying is openly discussed. Parents should always be available as a contact person.
Conclusions
In an increasingly digitalized, globalized, and socialized world, it is unsurprising that under 13-year-olds are also on Insta, Facebook, and Co.
Facebook has expressed that a platform designed for children would be that you could connect kids with kids and focus on the problems. However, experts and advocacy groups have warned that it could snowball into a bigger social problem for kids and parents.
In the face of the growing social criticisms of plans of an Instagram for Kids, Facebook’s plans may have fallen through. However, the increasing popularity of the platform in this age group also means that younger people increasingly want to have an Instagram account. While they are sometimes allowed to do so, others who are restricted to social media still end up there – and the social problem persists.
Conclusively, much of the solutions now don’t lie with Facebook, but parents and child care individuals and societies.
As child experts on KidsHealth.org advise, parents can only teach kids to be smart about social media. They can, however, create a family checklist of rules containing do’s and dont’s while educating children of the current vices targeted at their age group on social media.
