News Investigation

Facebook Puts Instagram for Kids on Hold After Pushback

Sep 2021 🇺🇸 PBS NewsHour

This September 2021 PBS NewsHour piece reports that Facebook (now Meta) paused development of a planned Instagram product for children under 13, following a Wall Street Journal investigation that described internal Facebook research associating heavy Instagram use with body-image and mood concerns among some teen girls, and after a bipartisan group of 44 state attorneys general urged the company to abandon the project over cyberbullying and child-safety concerns. Fairplay executive director Josh Golin, who had coordinated a large coalition of parents, advocates, and child-development experts opposing the product, is quoted urging Facebook to use the pause to genuinely consult independent child-development experts rather than treat it as a public-relations gesture. TechKids Foundation includes this as a documented policy outcome — a company decision to shelve a product — that Golin's coalition-led advocacy is directly credited with helping bring about.

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CITATION

PBS NewsHour. "Facebook Puts Instagram for Kids on Hold After Pushback." September 27, 2021. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/instagram-puts-pause-on-development-of-instagram-kids-amid-content-and-access-concerns

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