The change
means advertisers will soon be able to target under-18s only by age, gender or
location on Facebook, its Messenger service and its photo-sharing platform
Instagram. In a blog post, Instagram said it was making the change because it
agreed with youth advocates that young people might not be equipped to make
decisions about targeting.
Instagram
users under 16 years old will also start to be defaulted into having a private
account when they join the platform, the company said, in an effort to stop unwanted
contact from adults. They will still be given the option, however, to switch to
a public account and current users can keep their account as public.
Facebook’s
approach to younger users has been in the spotlight after U.S. lawmakers and
attorneys general slammed its leaked plans to launch a version of Instagram for
children under 13. Earlier this year, a group of more than 40 state attorneys
general wrote to CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking him to ditch the idea.
The company
said on Tuesday it was working on an “Instagram experience for tweens.” It has
said the idea of a youth-focused app is to provide parents greater transparency
and controls on what younger children who want to access Instagram are doing.
Several
major social media companies have also rolled out versions of their apps for
younger audiences, from Facebook’s Messenger Kids to Alphabet Inc
(GOOGL.O)-owned YouTube Kids.
Proponents
argue that children are already on a platform and so a family-friendly version
provides a safer environment, but critics say Facebook should not be trying to
hook young kids on its services due to risks to their development, mental
health and privacy.
Age
verification of children is an issue on many social media sites, which prohibit
kids under 13 but often fail to identify and remove underage users. In a
separate blog on Tuesday, Facebook’s head of youth products, Pavni Diwanji,
said it was using artificial intelligence to improve this verification and
remove underage accounts.
Instagram
also said it was making it harder in several countries for adults who have
shown potentially suspicious behaviour – such as recently being reported by a
young user – to find young people’s accounts, either through searching user
names or having the accounts suggested to them. It said it would prevent such
adults from seeing comments from young people on others’ posts and that the
adults would not be able to leave comments on the posts of young people.
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