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- Published: March 19, 2021 16:37
Washington (US): The social networking giant Facebook is planning to develop a new version of its subsidiary Instagram for kids under 13 years of age, where parents would have transparency or control over the accounts of their children.
According to The Verge, the Facebook-owned company that currently has policy bars for children under 13 said that it doesn’t have a detailed plan in place yet. Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri confirmed that a version of the popular photo-sharing app for children under 13 is in the works, where he agreed to the fact that the company knows a lot of kids want to use Instagram, but also wants to take care of their parent’s concern.
“Our 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.
Joe Osborne, a Facebook spokesperson also sent an email to The Verge saying that, “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 — as we did with Messenger Kids — that are suitable for kids, managed by parents.”
“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,” the mail further read.
Instagram recently published a blog post, that described that the company is in the works to make the platform safer for its youngest users, but made no mention of a new version for kids under 13.
As per The Verge, this news came after the company took example from Google’s September 2019 case, where the Federal Trade Commission fined the company USD 170 million for tracking the viewing histories of children to serve ads to them on YouTube, a violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
This is not the first time that Mark Zuckerberg owned company has tried to experiment for its young users. In 2017, the company launched an ad-free version of its Messenger chat platform for kids between the ages of 6 and 12. However, this idea was discontinued after the Children’s health advocates criticized it as harmful for kids.
Also in 2019, a bug in the Messenger Kids app allowed children to join groups with strangers, leaving thousands of kids in chats with unauthorized users. Facebook quietly closed those unauthorized chats, after started to affect a number of users.
