Facebook is wanting to make a version of Instagram for children younger than 13, as per reports acquired by BuzzFeed News.
“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,” Vishal Shah, Instagram’s VP of product, wrote on an employee board, according to BuzzFeed.
“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,” Shah added.
The new project will purportedly be administered by the head of Instagram Adam Mosseri and led by Vice President Pavni Diwanji. Diwanij recently worked at Google where she managed the making of children’s products like YouTube Kids.
Instagram’s terms of utilization presently forbid individuals under of 13 from utilizing the application.
“We have to do a lot here,” Mosseri told BuzzFeed. “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.”
Mosseri said the task was in early turn of events and added that Instagram doesn’t yet have a “detailed plan” in place.
“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,” a Facebook company spokesperson told The Hill in a statement. “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.”
BuzzFeed takes note of that Instagram had recently this week published a blog post addressing bullying among its more youthful, young clients.
“We require everyone to be at least 13 to use Instagram and have asked new users to provide their age when they sign up for an account for some time. While many people are honest about their age, we know that young people can lie about their date of birth,” Instagram wrote in the Tuesday blog post. “To address this challenge, we’re developing new artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to help us keep teens safer and apply new age-appropriate features.”
The new features included limiting direct messages between youngsters and grown-ups who they don’t follow, inciting teenagers to be more careful about interactions in direct messages, urging teens to make their accounts private and making it harder for grown-ups to discover and follow teens.