The topic of very young children , if not children , online is certainly delicate and concerns practically the whole world. The web offers interesting solutions to a wide range of problems, and at the same time it is the source of many potential problems that amplify their reach on young people.
Facebook knows this well and seems (still) willing to create a version of Instagram specific for users very young , i.e. for those who are less than 13 years old . There are several associations for the protection of children's rights that have publicly addressed Mark Zuckerberg to ask for a stop to this idea:
The true audience of a children's version of Instagram will consist of very young children who currently have no accounts on the platform. While collecting valuable family data and cultivating a new generation of Instagram users can be good for Facebook profits, it will likely increase the use of the app by young children who are particularly vulnerable to the manipulation and exploitation capabilities proposed by the platform.
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Facebook's response was not long in coming and assumes that very young children are already online , lying on their actual age. Therefore the purpose of Facebook would be to create a version of Instagram specially designed for such small users. This version would therefore be much more robust to possible intrusions by malicious people, protecting users also from the dynamics of marketing and profiling which are implemented on the standard version of the social network.
In parallel to this, Facebook has announced already concrete news for Instagram users who are less than 16 years old , or 18 years old in some countries, but more of 13. The changes concern the change of the default settings relating to your account: at the time of creation the account will be by default private , so that no one Unfollowed accounts can view posts, Stories and Reels.
Also in this context, Facebook said it made more difficult for suspicious accounts to identify young user accounts . Finally, Facebook reported having limited the range of action of advertisers on accounts associated with users under 16. The news just described will arrive for everyone during the next weeks.
