Facebook is working internally on the development of a new version of its Instagram social network aimed at underage users, specifically those under 13 years of age, below the current minimum version of the app for adults. This has been revealed by internal documents of Instagram executives to which BuzzFeed News has had access.
Instagram plans to “speed up privacy work” to ensure an experience “as secure as possible”
In them, the Vice President of Product of Instagram, Vishal Shah, assured her employees on Thursday that “youth work has been identified as a priority” in the first half of 2021. In this way, the Instagram Product group It will focus on “developing a version of Instagram that allows people under the age of 13 to use Instagram for the first time,” as the document stated.
As an additional aspect, Instagram also plans to “accelerate work on integrity and privacy” so that its main version and the new version for minors “ensure the safest possible experience for teenagers.”
IN INITIAL STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
In Spain, the minimum age to create a profile on Instagram is 14 years old, and the platform has recently begun to develop technologies based on machine learning to prevent minors from lying about the age of their accounts, as well as for adults may not write Direct Messages to minors who do not follow them.
According to Facebook’s internal document, those in charge of supervising the new project for the version of Instagram for minors are the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, and the vice president of the social network, Pavni Diwanji, who participated in the development of YouTube Kids in his previous stage in Google.
Mosseri has assured in statements to BuzzFeed News that the version of Instagram for children is still in its initial stages of development, that it does not have a “detailed plan” for its arrival and that it is expected that “parents have transparency and control” over their children. The parent company Facebook has already launched previous products aimed especially for children, such as Messenger Kids, the mode for minors of its messaging app, available in some countries of the world but not in Spain at the moment.
