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Pausing “Instagram Kids” and building parental supervision tools

180 points by decrypt 5y ago

megamix 5y ago
am I the only one with TLS error?
- decrypt 5y ago
  Loads okay at my end.
- 35fbe7d3d5b9 5y ago
  Browsing at work and got hit by a social media content filter? ;)
  - megamix 5y ago
    you got it!
runawaybottle 5y ago
Shouldn’t their machine learning models be able to detect who looks like a kid and provide age appropriate content on Insta? If they are not doing that already, Insta is basically recommending adult content to kids.
- brettermeier 5y ago
  Oh some people would have problems with that, not every adult looks like one and stuff.
  - pj1115 5y ago
    As I get closer to thirty years old, the idea of a person or machine asking for a grown-up to verify my identity gives me feelings that are more mixed than I expected.
- KaiserPro 5y ago
  its not very accurate, easy to fool and requires facebook to build an archive of pictures of children to build models against....
- sodality2 5y ago
  If my account got locked because Instagram thought I was a child (and I wasn't) I think I'd be pretty upset.
  - jon-wood 5y ago
    I'd take it as a complement, but I think that's a thing that comes with age.
    - X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
      As someone who has a genetic condition where I look younger than I am I've come to believe they if someone has to explain that it's a compliment they should really do more second guessing
- retrac 5y ago
  Young children, sure. But teenagers? I had a full beard by 16. The only reliable way we've ensured not to sell alcohol to kids is to verify ID. (And it's not terribly reliable anyway.)
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  They do claim to know your age to target ads, so what gives? Either it doesnt work or they don't care
sodality2 5y ago
Parental supervision only works if the parent cares enough to even monitor digital usage. Instagram kids is quite possibly the worst idea for society I've seen in a while. The correlation between social media use and mental health issues, dropping grades, etc, in kids that are getting younger and younger, is stunning in my (admittedly anecdotal) experience. I hope this is legislated against, heavily. Seriously, I'm seeing kids that are as young as 12 years old, spending hours on TikTok or the Instagram explore page, IN CLASS. It's just a terrible, terrible thing to see.
- supercanuck 5y ago
  Parental supervision only works if the parent *IS CAPABALE* enough to even monitor digital usage.
  - hwers 5y ago
    I mean both need to be true
    - supercanuck 5y ago
      You can “care” and be incapable.
- goda90 5y ago
  Maybe it needs a system where the account locks if there isn't occasional parental monitoring. Then the kids would be the ones encouraging their parents to check. Maybe the parent has to take a selfie for facial verification or something.
  - micromacrofoot 5y ago
    Sometimes software isn't the answer. I think this is a good example. One of my child's friends plays Roblox nearly every waking hour outside of school. He's 5. People naturally would ask "where are his parents?" ...she's a single mom working two jobs, and he's at home with a teenage sister as his only supervision most of the time. This isn't uncommon in the US. I was a latchkey kid myself, my babysitter was TV. People say that parents need to pay attention to their kids more, but parents don't need more or better software, they need money and time.
bildung 5y ago
Parental supervision is just a means of externalizing the societal costs of the platform onto the parents. How about building a product that isn't a net negative to society in the first place?
codegeek 5y ago
"We started this project to address an important problem seen across our industry: kids are getting phones younger and younger, misrepresenting their age, and downloading apps that are meant for those 13 or older." Just because kids have access (which is mostly on Parents to blame), you want to add another app in the name of "it is kid friendly". I can only lol at this. Seriously, I don't criticize such harshly in general but as a parent of young kids, I would rather have Instagram be honest and say "We want to make more money and Kids under 13 are a great target nowadays". I am very open with kids having access to things in a moderate way. We allow them to watch movies/TV or even Ipad etc but restricted. I believe that the more you stop kids, they more they want to do it. One exception we will make will be Social Media. What a cesspool it is and there is no way I am allowing my underage kids to do Instagram or FB or whatever. I will fight hard to keep them away from the toxicity of Social Media. Some things they won't understand and you need to protect them from it regardless. The good thing is both my wife and I hardly use Social Media if any. So that hopefully will be an example for kids but I know that may not be enough considering other kids in their school may be doing it and there will be peer pressure. Ah well, I am ready to fight that.
- whoisjuan 5y ago
  I don't disagree with you, but this is not a situation where you are going to find a solution in the problem cause. Many parents will keep raising theirs kids with undiscriminate access to smartphones. Just because you have it under control in your household, doesn't mean everyone does. You're basically saying: "Not my kids, not my problem".... and that's the position many will take. I'm not convinced IG for Kids is the right solution, but it is at least an intentional move towards fixing the foundation of the problem. It will take more than that, though. It's probably a problem that needs to be fixed by forcing big tech companies to cooperate, something that it's unlikely to happen in an era where those companies enjoy antagonizing each other.
  - codegeek 5y ago
    I think overall we don't really need Instagram for kids. We have plenty of apps that are used by kids already. I don't see a reason why a Kid needs Instagram.
sergiomattei 5y ago
Kids won't use Instagram for kids.
- pj1115 5y ago
  I think this is the better question - will teens stop participating in grown-up spaces just because there's a 'safe' version just for them? However, for younger kids (say, 5-11) I think a separate environment is the best solution. Up to a certain point, parents have more influence on what their child does. For all its problems, most parents I know are comfortable with YouTube Kids because it's the lesser of two evils. I know that my child is going to participate in social media either way, so I want them to do it in a sandbox until the day I don't get a say.
- tomjen3 5y ago
  I think you are right, but it allows parents to say "you can get instagram for kids" as a way to compromise.
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  Kids will, teens won't. Starting from about eleven or twelve-teen.
whywhywhywhy 5y ago
>The reality is that kids are already online tbh once they are it's already over anyway, you're just holding back the tide at that point. Need strict supervision to protect them from online dangers and there is nothing you can do to prevent the dopamine addiction. It's no coincidence many of the people who create this hardware/software and networks don't let their own children anywhere near them.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
stuaxo 5y ago
Telling that Facebooks solution is surveillance.
fullshark 5y ago
Pretty clear FB thinks it’s unfairly targeted every time it faces a PR crisis and it comes across in their messaging.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Can you imagine the shareholder reaction if they even hinted at feeling justifiably targeted by a PR outrage?
  - fullshark 5y ago
    Sure but PR is an artform for a reason. This one just seems too transparently "We stopped work on this thing but this is why you are all wrong for being mad at us."
mateioprea 5y ago
I have this saved in my notes. Forgot from where I saved it from, but it’s so accurate: "I work in the cyber security industry, and I can tell you over the years, I've seen kids - including my own - do things that first-world government teams and crack white hat groups could not have done any better. Give up now. There is no app, no operating system, no proxy, scanner or firewall, and no setting that will ever defeat a determined kid. Plus, they work in groups, and are able to coordinate even better than their adult counterparts to find and disseminate new hacks. It's an arms race that cannot be won with technology. You find a setting, they find a workaround. Apple updates, they find a new weakness. Take their phones. Put them in a box. Sit on the box and guard it. Maybe buy a Faraday bag or something. Watch them cry and talk about how they'll be social outcasts and their friends will mock them, or moan about how they need it for school to check the Facebook page their teacher posts assignments to. Turn a deaf ear. Know that you are helping them just like our parents were when they made us eat vegetables (which you know, are actually pretty darned good - thanks, Mom). "
- sharemywin 5y ago
  don't forget threats of suicide.
- reayn 5y ago
  While I agree with the sentiment that a determined kid would go to just about any length to get something, even if that something is bad for him, I will have to give a hard "no" to what you said afterwards. Pointlessly denying a child what he deems to be a necessity in his modern life without giving valid reasoning is a terrible idea and will just make the kid despise his parents. A much better tactic, and one that I see neglected far too often is to instill the reasoning into the kids from a young age, don't bar them from what's bad from them, teach them that why and how it's bad so they themselves keep a distance. My parents did his very effectively with me and my siblings, and we, despite our age and frequent exposure to such things, naturally gravitate away from obsession. And this isn't just a niche case, there are many people, even in my generation, who are waking up to the reality and behaving in a similar manner, although it's hard to get that fact out there with all the stigma surrounding basically any teenager nowadays. And saying that this strategy "doesn't work" or is "too hard" is usually just cope for parents with poor skills in my experience. >Watch them cry and talk about how they'll be social outcasts and their friends will mock them, or moan about how they need it for school to check the Facebook page their teacher posts assignments to. I genuinely can't tell if this is some sort of meta-ironic take but no, just no. The vast majority of even elementary school childrens' lives are being moved online slowly but surely, and whether you like it or not they are going to have to pull out that laptop or phone for hours a day, can you sit and watch them for that entire time?
andrew_ 5y ago
"Pausing." Permanently shelving would have been the move. This is almost certainly smokescreen to shift the PR, hoping to sneak "Instagram Kids" back in when there's less heat.
treeman79 5y ago
Adopted a teenage daughter. Gave her a phone. We had a 5 year cycle of deep depression on phone. Take away phone for x months. Teen becomes happy and full of life. Couple days after getting phone back she was super depressed again. Every single time. No variation. Phone == depression no phone == happy teen. Not perfect without phone by any stretch, but general mood was involved with family and cheerful. This went on until she was old enough to move out so we would stop taking her phone away. A couple years later she finally realized what social media was doing to her and she turned it off herself. Started getting her life together. Other daughters are pissed because they can’t have a phone. When I query about the friends. It’s the same pattern. Every friend with a phone is obsessed with it. The ones without are much more fun to hang out with.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  Maybe, just maybe, in the battle between a billion dollar marketing and addiction machine staffed by world brightest minds vs a teenage brain, teenage brain looses. Probably adult brain looses too. We dont expect everyday joe to fight a heavyweight chamption, or defend himself in court. Some changes are needed.
- floren 5y ago
  I was really happy to read that she voluntarily cut herself off from the phone when she moved out. I was afraid the punchline was going to be "so now she's constantly miserable". Good for her!
  - treeman79 5y ago
    She was utterly miserable for two years after moving out. She got to know her “real” family. After dragging her bio dad out of literal ditch in 2 occasions. Well she decided she wanted to get herself together. Was a wake up call. I’ll be waking her down the aisle soon. She is marrying a very nice guy.
jdub 5y ago
It's mind-boggling* that a company can be entirely aware of their negative impact on teenagers and think, "We have to go deeper".
- damontal 5y ago
  They don’t care. Why is that hard to understand?
mfer 5y ago
This idea is about punting responsibility onto parents. This way FB can claim the responsibility is not on them but on parents. It's in many ways a legal maneuver. The reality of helping kids requires parents who are well enough informed and engaged here. This is something we don't have. I've talked with many people outside of tech circles and they are typically unaware of any consequences to kids. Sometimes they just don't believe it. This isn't about helping kids. It's about shifting legal responsibility so they can keep doing what they do.
- zelon88 5y ago
  I think it should be the parents responsibility. If we let social media determine what is acceptable for all children it is guaranteed that the bar will be too low for many and too high for many others. Parents should be the final say in what is right for their kids. Kids develop at vastly varying rates. Not absolving themselves of liability implies that they are making decisions in a vacuum that parents should be making themselves. But like you said, most parents don't understand the risks. That's why social media should be forced to perform studies on the risks associated with their products and make those studies public. Then, when you use a device for the first time it should show you in plain language - like a new user signing into Windows ("Hi, we're getting everything ready for you...") - where to find that information. When a single change of code can instantly impact millions of children (or anyone really) the stakes for the public are high enough that the public deserves transparency. If nothing else to ensure that Instagram is making decisions backed by due diligence.
  - mfer 5y ago
    > I think it should be the parents responsibility. Parents and corps aren't the only ones in this conversation. There is also governments. Should we have let parents decide if kids smoking was ok or not? Some governments stepped in and required labels be placed on packages and set age limits. I'm not saying that the way smoking was handled was right or wrong. I'm using it to illustrate that there are other angles and players. > That's why social media should be forced to perform studies on the risks associated with their products and make those studies public. One of the things I've found is that studies performed by an organization on their stuff tend to show it in a much better light than independent studies. When there is a financial interest people tend to contort things to improve on their financial interest. I don't want to see studies from them. I want independent studies with researchers who are allowed to get enough data to perform them. > Parents should be the final say in what is right for their kids. What happens when you have uninformed parents? I'm reminded that these tech companies are using strategies meant to hide the knowledge of what they're doing from the people they're doing it to. How do you handle that part of the equation?
cmg 5y ago
Instagram says they'll be consulting with "parents, experts and policymakers" but this leaves out a very important part of the 'safe apps for kids' ecosystem - the children themselves. They are using apps and online social spaces in ways that adults can't imagine or comprehend. They're dealing with self-esteem issues, bullying, predators, extreme content and targeted advertising & algorithmic content to keep them engaged. Kids aren't dumb. They're certainly as - or more - susceptible to the negative effects of social media as the rest of us but they shouldn't be ignored here or relegated to a class to be protected because of some kind of diminished capacity. Instead, IG and the experts should be working with them, including their ideas and feedback. Similar to the iOS feature that can scan the messages of people under 18 on a family account for nudes, features like will get LGBTQ kids who don't have supportive homes in trouble for exploring their sexuality & identity. It will get kids who are looking for support in abusive situations via actually helpful posts in trouble when their adults see what they've been looking at. I remember what kind of issues I had at home before I learned how to clear my web browser history in the 90s - I can only imagine how much worse this could be in terms of surveillance of kids.
- detcader 5y ago
  Counterpoint: children should relegated to a class to be protected
  - cmg 5y ago
    I probably wasn't clear enough - children should be protected for a variety of reasons, but they should also be consulted about the issues they face and how best to protect them.
    - detcader 5y ago
      There's nobody to consult. It's like making drone strike pilots more inclusive. Normalizing children posting pictures of themselves online is pure evil. Children's pictures shouldn't be posted publicly online, period. This goes for parents posting them too. Because they can't consent. We have never had anything like the internet before, where you can instantly put things into the global public record forever. I only hope people will to stop and think about this. History doesn't make one optimistic though
nkotov 5y ago
I had unfiltered internet access as a kid. When I was a preteen, I had a MySpace account by just simply lying about my age. A lot of my friends did the same. In middle school, we figured out ways to go around school district firewall/filter to access flash game sites. I honestly think that kids won't use "X for Kids" when they have access to devices. They will just figure out ways to get around the block and do what they want. For my children, I'm not giving them personal devices until an appropriate age and with an MDM to manage the device and set limits especially around how long they can spend on apps/device.
- concinds 5y ago
  > For my children, I'm not giving them personal devices until an appropriate age and with an MDM to manage the device and set limits especially around how long they can spend on apps/device. I didn't have internet access until age 10, and was only given a flipphone shortly after that. On the one hand, I was immature for my age and can imagine millions of ways in which things could have gone catastrophically wrong; and the way my parents did things feels pretty well thought out. But on the other hand, I'd have definitely preferred having local development tools, maybe a Raspberry Pi (didn't exist then), predownloaded PDF manuals, anything I could have tinkered with. Instead all I did before age 10 was play video games, since that (and typing documents) was all there was. In a world where kids grow up with computers from a young age, some will entertain themselves all day, and some will learn from program all day, and obviously have access to very different opportunities. I'm tempted to say: "no electronics until 10, etc" like some strict parents I know, but it does feel like an outdated attitude that can hinder kids as much as it helps them. Some of my friends at 13-15 played games all day, while some worked hard at school, had great extracurriculars, and still had access to the exact same tech. I'm convinced the problem is not technological but emotional/psychological, and that one day we'll figure out how to raise kids in a a way that you can give them unrestricted tech, and they'll experience all the benefits and no downside, we just haven't reached that level of "parenting science" yet to make it reproducible.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Tempest1981 5y ago
Here's why supervision is hard: All text books and school assignments are now done online. Some grading is even outsourced to the textbook companies. Kids are skilled at switching between apps (alt-tab). Parents don't have time to hover over the kid and laptop for 2 hours each night. And kids have internet access at school, or at a friend's house, or at the stores nearby. Phones and laptops are difficult for parents to lock down.
annoyingnoob 5y ago
Stop trying to be Joe Camel. Edit: downvote all you want, but show evidence that Instagram is in any way healthy or appropriate for children, sure looks like trying to hook the next generation on Instagram, no different than Joe Camel with cigarettes.
verytrivial 5y ago
Are they use "pause" in the "pile into a heap and set alight" sense? Edit: I ask because Insta is still using the "your browser may have ways to block cookies" which I can't believe for a second is GDPR compliant.
helen___keller 5y ago
Forget "kids", I'm an adult and I'd love to have versions of all modern social media with the 'growth hacking' features axed. Remember the days before forever scrolling on Reddit? When Facebook timelines were chronological? When bullshit clickbait links didn't show up as "recommended" after you meticulously pruned bullshit clickbait groups from your feed? When Youtube didn't just autoplay down into the deep dark depths of crazytown? How about social media that's actually social instead of just being the same national outrage "conversation" being replayed in a slightly different setting?
- flatiron 5y ago
  At least for YouTube you can disable auto play.
  - cube00 5y ago
    ...and yet it still manages to turn itself back on whenever you sign in again, when you cast to a new device...and you can't tell me the company that knows everything about me can't remember my preference for not wanting auto play. Other services seem to remember it just fine, I set it once on Netflix and have never needed to set it ever again.
  - helen___keller 5y ago
    Actually, my issue with YouTube isn't really the autoplay per se, it's how the recommended videos (including autoplayed videos) go very aggressively into rabbit holes. I'll listen to an anime music playlist and my entire recommended video / front page becomes full of anime stuff. An in-law joins Youtube to watch bible study videos and now they're an avowed freedom fighter against the globalist satanist cabal running the world. That sort of thing.
    - stolenmerch 5y ago
      This is a feature and I love it. I don't want to subscribe to football channels, for example, but if I'm in the mood I watch a couple of them and then it shows me related videos for a few more hours and then it switches when I decide to search for cooking videos, of which I don't want to subscribe to either. Works great.
klyrs 5y ago
Why do I get the feeling that these "Parental Supervision Tools" is a ploy to force parents to make Instagram accounts, with all of the data harvesting that goes along with that? The alternative is to not make an Instagram for kids -- this approach uses the social pressure felt by kids to leverage parents into the next billion users...
jvvw 5y ago
The problem I've found with kids' platforms - thinking mostly of YouTube Kids but others too - is that they are so tied down that your children can't get to things that they or indeed that you want them to - often quite educational things, so you end up just giving them access to the adult versions because you want to support their interests. Also, the 'needing to be 12 years old' rule for many sites is a very handy one for parents as it gives you a solid reason for not giving permission for certain sites. It may be widely ignored but it's still very useful and enough parents do adhere to it, that you don't feel like you are making your children an outcast!
- 83457 5y ago
  A service like Netflix should really have age groups. There is such a huge gap between kids and open access. Something like under 8, under 10, under 13, under 16 would be about it. Just because I don't mind if I let my 12 year old watch PG-13 movies doesn't mean I want them to start watching softcore porn in Game of Thrones.
bob229 5y ago
Delete. Your. Social. Media.
spoonjim 5y ago
I’d like to see an Instagram where you can’t post a picture of a person. So the competition becomes who can take the coolest photo. Of course that rewards kids with the resources to get to interesting places, but I think it’s less toxic to be compared for your means than it is to be compared for your appearance, especially for girls.
prpl 5y ago
I want to take a “trust, but verify” model with my kids, but all the different apps, capabilities, websites make it exceptionally difficult. Apple+ screen time is okay in centralizing some things , but I wish apps could expose some controls or logging to that or some other centralized service.
kitsune_ 5y ago
I wonder what Bill Hicks' take on "Instagram for Kids" would have been.
balls187 5y ago
"Don't blame us, kids are already online." What a tone deaf response.
twodave 5y ago
Instagram doesn't need to bother with this. Parents do. None of my kids will have access to this stuff unattended until they're mature enough to do other adult things on their own (like drive, get married, etc.). The Internet has never been a safe place for kids, and it never will be. I blame most of my adult issues on the fact that I had Internet access from a PC in my room from the age of 10. And that was more than 20 years ago when porn was harder to find and social media just consisted of yahoo chat rooms.
daniel-thompson 5y ago
Social media just makes it easier for kids to be awful to each other, and extends that opportunity from school hours to 24/7. This is not a not-having-the-right tools problem. It's a human nature problem, and no software will ever change that.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
gotsa 5y ago
I wonder how long will it take for society to ban all social media usage for people under 18 years old.
- gordon_freeman 5y ago
  It all depends on how soon Congress can act.
  - strulovich 5y ago
    Does this include all multiplayer gaming (for example)? Doing as you suggest is basically what the Chinese government just enacted. If not, what sets one communication app from another?
- TechBro8615 5y ago
  It will come as soon as governments realize that's a great excuse for requiring an ID to connect to the internet. Think of the children, etc.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
xanaxagoras 5y ago
I say do nothing and let the chips fall where they may. There's no big tech solution to this insanity. People born today will fall into 1 of 2 categories: 1. Those whose parents gave them phones as children 2. Those whose parents did not give them phones as children The former group will become fragile, suicidal narcissists who can't cope with or navigate the external world. They'll have soon-to-be trite problems like gender dysphoria and agoraphobia and will mistakenly think this makes them interesting or constitutes a personality. The later group will grow up as ordinary people by objective standards, but against the backdrop of the first group they will seem like they have superpowers - the Joe Bauerses of tomorrow so to speak. The internet and social media ruin all minds, but especially the child's mind. Hopefully once these two groups are well articulated and obvious to all, parents will start to make better decisions.
- freeflight 5y ago
  There are more than just these two categories, there are also parents who give their children phones and then heavily regulate usage with third-party tools.
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  Was expecting to disagree, but then read the whole post. (^insert something about subscribing to your newsletter.)
etxm 5y ago
Kids need social networks, but they need them IRL. Instagram and Facebook are a scourge.
etxm 5y ago
> We believe building “Instagram Kids” is the right thing to do No it’s fucking not, you morally corrupt sacks of garbage.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Problem is if they do not, kids will hang out on TikTok. That said, I don't think content restriction will work for anyone at least a little bit curious. Good that kids aren't...
freeflight 5y ago
So they were trying to build an "Instagram Kids" without any thought about parental supervision? I guess the original plan was to just moderate all the content, until they realized how that wouldn't scale, so now the moderation will be outsourced to the parents: "Your kid found something nasty on Instagram kids? That's your fault because you didn't properly supervise it with the tools we gave you!"
tzm 5y ago
'You're Enough' by Laurence Fuller https://vimeo.com/537977184 https://vimeo.com/537977184
gilbetron 5y ago
As a parent of an almost 13 year old, I have no fucking idea what to expect from the next 5 years trying to raise him in this world. And I mean that literally, sometimes I think it's going to be great sometimes I think it's going to be 100% awful, I'm assuming it will be somewhere in the middle. I don't know what to expect. It's truly terrifying. I'd love any help getting perspective and developing techniques to survive and help my son navigate this new world he is growing into.
madrox 5y ago
I have a hunch -- and it's no more than a hunch -- that this has nothing to do with anything except the Metaverse. I think Facebook believes children won't grow up socializing on Instagrams and Tiktoks...they'll socialize in something that looks more like a virtual world, whether it's Fortnite or Minecraft or whatever the equivalent is in 5-10 years. Through that lens, it's perfectly appropriate to shift your investments.
Jonanin 5y ago
I find it strange that everyone loses their mind at the prospect of IG for kids, but no one bats an eye at the already-released YouTube for kids or TikTok for kids. The latter, of course, is built by a company entirely beholden to the Chinese government. That sounds pretty scary to me. I guess it's just a matter of what will make the best headline.
grvdrm 5y ago
Question for parents commenting on this: rather than block the apps, have you instead just blocked access to the services instead? E.g. blocking Instagram/Facebook/TikTok URLs from passing through your network? May seem silly and/or not even worth it but I'm curious about the different ways people are practically addressing this problem - control over the phone via app blocks, network blocks, taking phones away? What's working for you?

180 points by decrypt 5y ago

megamix 5y ago

am I the only one with TLS error?

decrypt 5y ago
Loads okay at my end.
35fbe7d3d5b9 5y ago
Browsing at work and got hit by a social media content filter? ;)
- megamix 5y ago
  you got it!

runawaybottle 5y ago

Shouldn’t their machine learning models be able to detect who looks like a kid and provide age appropriate content on Insta? If they are not doing that already, Insta is basically recommending adult content to kids.

brettermeier 5y ago
Oh some people would have problems with that, not every adult looks like one and stuff.
- pj1115 5y ago
  As I get closer to thirty years old, the idea of a person or machine asking for a grown-up to verify my identity gives me feelings that are more mixed than I expected.
KaiserPro 5y ago
its not very accurate, easy to fool and requires facebook to build an archive of pictures of children to build models against....
sodality2 5y ago
If my account got locked because Instagram thought I was a child (and I wasn't) I think I'd be pretty upset.
- jon-wood 5y ago
  I'd take it as a complement, but I think that's a thing that comes with age.
  - X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
    As someone who has a genetic condition where I look younger than I am I've come to believe they if someone has to explain that it's a compliment they should really do more second guessing
retrac 5y ago
Young children, sure. But teenagers? I had a full beard by 16. The only reliable way we've ensured not to sell alcohol to kids is to verify ID. (And it's not terribly reliable anyway.)
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
They do claim to know your age to target ads, so what gives? Either it doesnt work or they don't care

sodality2 5y ago

Parental supervision only works if the parent cares enough to even monitor digital usage. Instagram kids is quite possibly the worst idea for society I've seen in a while. The correlation between social media use and mental health issues, dropping grades, etc, in kids that are getting younger and younger, is stunning in my (admittedly anecdotal) experience. I hope this is legislated against, heavily. Seriously, I'm seeing kids that are as young as 12 years old, spending hours on TikTok or the Instagram explore page, IN CLASS. It's just a terrible, terrible thing to see.

supercanuck 5y ago
Parental supervision only works if the parent *IS CAPABALE* enough to even monitor digital usage.
- hwers 5y ago
  I mean both need to be true
  - supercanuck 5y ago
    You can “care” and be incapable.
goda90 5y ago
Maybe it needs a system where the account locks if there isn't occasional parental monitoring. Then the kids would be the ones encouraging their parents to check. Maybe the parent has to take a selfie for facial verification or something.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  Sometimes software isn't the answer. I think this is a good example. One of my child's friends plays Roblox nearly every waking hour outside of school. He's 5. People naturally would ask "where are his parents?" ...she's a single mom working two jobs, and he's at home with a teenage sister as his only supervision most of the time. This isn't uncommon in the US. I was a latchkey kid myself, my babysitter was TV. People say that parents need to pay attention to their kids more, but parents don't need more or better software, they need money and time.

bildung 5y ago

Parental supervision is just a means of externalizing the societal costs of the platform onto the parents. How about building a product that isn't a net negative to society in the first place?

codegeek 5y ago

"We started this project to address an important problem seen across our industry: kids are getting phones younger and younger, misrepresenting their age, and downloading apps that are meant for those 13 or older." Just because kids have access (which is mostly on Parents to blame), you want to add another app in the name of "it is kid friendly". I can only lol at this. Seriously, I don't criticize such harshly in general but as a parent of young kids, I would rather have Instagram be honest and say "We want to make more money and Kids under 13 are a great target nowadays". I am very open with kids having access to things in a moderate way. We allow them to watch movies/TV or even Ipad etc but restricted. I believe that the more you stop kids, they more they want to do it. One exception we will make will be Social Media. What a cesspool it is and there is no way I am allowing my underage kids to do Instagram or FB or whatever. I will fight hard to keep them away from the toxicity of Social Media. Some things they won't understand and you need to protect them from it regardless. The good thing is both my wife and I hardly use Social Media if any. So that hopefully will be an example for kids but I know that may not be enough considering other kids in their school may be doing it and there will be peer pressure. Ah well, I am ready to fight that.

whoisjuan 5y ago
I don't disagree with you, but this is not a situation where you are going to find a solution in the problem cause. Many parents will keep raising theirs kids with undiscriminate access to smartphones. Just because you have it under control in your household, doesn't mean everyone does. You're basically saying: "Not my kids, not my problem".... and that's the position many will take. I'm not convinced IG for Kids is the right solution, but it is at least an intentional move towards fixing the foundation of the problem. It will take more than that, though. It's probably a problem that needs to be fixed by forcing big tech companies to cooperate, something that it's unlikely to happen in an era where those companies enjoy antagonizing each other.
- codegeek 5y ago
  I think overall we don't really need Instagram for kids. We have plenty of apps that are used by kids already. I don't see a reason why a Kid needs Instagram.

sergiomattei 5y ago

Kids won't use Instagram for kids.

pj1115 5y ago
I think this is the better question - will teens stop participating in grown-up spaces just because there's a 'safe' version just for them? However, for younger kids (say, 5-11) I think a separate environment is the best solution. Up to a certain point, parents have more influence on what their child does. For all its problems, most parents I know are comfortable with YouTube Kids because it's the lesser of two evils. I know that my child is going to participate in social media either way, so I want them to do it in a sandbox until the day I don't get a say.
tomjen3 5y ago
I think you are right, but it allows parents to say "you can get instagram for kids" as a way to compromise.
mixmastamyk 5y ago
Kids will, teens won't. Starting from about eleven or twelve-teen.

whywhywhywhy 5y ago

>The reality is that kids are already online tbh once they are it's already over anyway, you're just holding back the tide at that point. Need strict supervision to protect them from online dangers and there is nothing you can do to prevent the dopamine addiction. It's no coincidence many of the people who create this hardware/software and networks don't let their own children anywhere near them.

deleted 5y ago
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stuaxo 5y ago

Telling that Facebooks solution is surveillance.

fullshark 5y ago

Pretty clear FB thinks it’s unfairly targeted every time it faces a PR crisis and it comes across in their messaging.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
Can you imagine the shareholder reaction if they even hinted at feeling justifiably targeted by a PR outrage?
- fullshark 5y ago
  Sure but PR is an artform for a reason. This one just seems too transparently "We stopped work on this thing but this is why you are all wrong for being mad at us."

mateioprea 5y ago

I have this saved in my notes. Forgot from where I saved it from, but it’s so accurate: "I work in the cyber security industry, and I can tell you over the years, I've seen kids - including my own - do things that first-world government teams and crack white hat groups could not have done any better. Give up now. There is no app, no operating system, no proxy, scanner or firewall, and no setting that will ever defeat a determined kid. Plus, they work in groups, and are able to coordinate even better than their adult counterparts to find and disseminate new hacks. It's an arms race that cannot be won with technology. You find a setting, they find a workaround. Apple updates, they find a new weakness. Take their phones. Put them in a box. Sit on the box and guard it. Maybe buy a Faraday bag or something. Watch them cry and talk about how they'll be social outcasts and their friends will mock them, or moan about how they need it for school to check the Facebook page their teacher posts assignments to. Turn a deaf ear. Know that you are helping them just like our parents were when they made us eat vegetables (which you know, are actually pretty darned good - thanks, Mom). "

sharemywin 5y ago
don't forget threats of suicide.
reayn 5y ago
While I agree with the sentiment that a determined kid would go to just about any length to get something, even if that something is bad for him, I will have to give a hard "no" to what you said afterwards. Pointlessly denying a child what he deems to be a necessity in his modern life without giving valid reasoning is a terrible idea and will just make the kid despise his parents. A much better tactic, and one that I see neglected far too often is to instill the reasoning into the kids from a young age, don't bar them from what's bad from them, teach them that why and how it's bad so they themselves keep a distance. My parents did his very effectively with me and my siblings, and we, despite our age and frequent exposure to such things, naturally gravitate away from obsession. And this isn't just a niche case, there are many people, even in my generation, who are waking up to the reality and behaving in a similar manner, although it's hard to get that fact out there with all the stigma surrounding basically any teenager nowadays. And saying that this strategy "doesn't work" or is "too hard" is usually just cope for parents with poor skills in my experience. >Watch them cry and talk about how they'll be social outcasts and their friends will mock them, or moan about how they need it for school to check the Facebook page their teacher posts assignments to. I genuinely can't tell if this is some sort of meta-ironic take but no, just no. The vast majority of even elementary school childrens' lives are being moved online slowly but surely, and whether you like it or not they are going to have to pull out that laptop or phone for hours a day, can you sit and watch them for that entire time?

andrew_ 5y ago

"Pausing." Permanently shelving would have been the move. This is almost certainly smokescreen to shift the PR, hoping to sneak "Instagram Kids" back in when there's less heat.

treeman79 5y ago

Adopted a teenage daughter. Gave her a phone. We had a 5 year cycle of deep depression on phone. Take away phone for x months. Teen becomes happy and full of life. Couple days after getting phone back she was super depressed again. Every single time. No variation. Phone == depression no phone == happy teen. Not perfect without phone by any stretch, but general mood was involved with family and cheerful. This went on until she was old enough to move out so we would stop taking her phone away. A couple years later she finally realized what social media was doing to her and she turned it off herself. Started getting her life together. Other daughters are pissed because they can’t have a phone. When I query about the friends. It’s the same pattern. Every friend with a phone is obsessed with it. The ones without are much more fun to hang out with.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
Maybe, just maybe, in the battle between a billion dollar marketing and addiction machine staffed by world brightest minds vs a teenage brain, teenage brain looses. Probably adult brain looses too. We dont expect everyday joe to fight a heavyweight chamption, or defend himself in court. Some changes are needed.
floren 5y ago
I was really happy to read that she voluntarily cut herself off from the phone when she moved out. I was afraid the punchline was going to be "so now she's constantly miserable". Good for her!
- treeman79 5y ago
  She was utterly miserable for two years after moving out. She got to know her “real” family. After dragging her bio dad out of literal ditch in 2 occasions. Well she decided she wanted to get herself together. Was a wake up call. I’ll be waking her down the aisle soon. She is marrying a very nice guy.

jdub 5y ago

It's mind-boggling* that a company can be entirely aware of their negative impact on teenagers and think, "We have to go deeper".

damontal 5y ago
They don’t care. Why is that hard to understand?

mfer 5y ago

This idea is about punting responsibility onto parents. This way FB can claim the responsibility is not on them but on parents. It's in many ways a legal maneuver. The reality of helping kids requires parents who are well enough informed and engaged here. This is something we don't have. I've talked with many people outside of tech circles and they are typically unaware of any consequences to kids. Sometimes they just don't believe it. This isn't about helping kids. It's about shifting legal responsibility so they can keep doing what they do.

zelon88 5y ago
I think it should be the parents responsibility. If we let social media determine what is acceptable for all children it is guaranteed that the bar will be too low for many and too high for many others. Parents should be the final say in what is right for their kids. Kids develop at vastly varying rates. Not absolving themselves of liability implies that they are making decisions in a vacuum that parents should be making themselves. But like you said, most parents don't understand the risks. That's why social media should be forced to perform studies on the risks associated with their products and make those studies public. Then, when you use a device for the first time it should show you in plain language - like a new user signing into Windows ("Hi, we're getting everything ready for you...") - where to find that information. When a single change of code can instantly impact millions of children (or anyone really) the stakes for the public are high enough that the public deserves transparency. If nothing else to ensure that Instagram is making decisions backed by due diligence.
- mfer 5y ago
  > I think it should be the parents responsibility. Parents and corps aren't the only ones in this conversation. There is also governments. Should we have let parents decide if kids smoking was ok or not? Some governments stepped in and required labels be placed on packages and set age limits. I'm not saying that the way smoking was handled was right or wrong. I'm using it to illustrate that there are other angles and players. > That's why social media should be forced to perform studies on the risks associated with their products and make those studies public. One of the things I've found is that studies performed by an organization on their stuff tend to show it in a much better light than independent studies. When there is a financial interest people tend to contort things to improve on their financial interest. I don't want to see studies from them. I want independent studies with researchers who are allowed to get enough data to perform them. > Parents should be the final say in what is right for their kids. What happens when you have uninformed parents? I'm reminded that these tech companies are using strategies meant to hide the knowledge of what they're doing from the people they're doing it to. How do you handle that part of the equation?

cmg 5y ago

Instagram says they'll be consulting with "parents, experts and policymakers" but this leaves out a very important part of the 'safe apps for kids' ecosystem - the children themselves. They are using apps and online social spaces in ways that adults can't imagine or comprehend. They're dealing with self-esteem issues, bullying, predators, extreme content and targeted advertising & algorithmic content to keep them engaged. Kids aren't dumb. They're certainly as - or more - susceptible to the negative effects of social media as the rest of us but they shouldn't be ignored here or relegated to a class to be protected because of some kind of diminished capacity. Instead, IG and the experts should be working with them, including their ideas and feedback. Similar to the iOS feature that can scan the messages of people under 18 on a family account for nudes, features like will get LGBTQ kids who don't have supportive homes in trouble for exploring their sexuality & identity. It will get kids who are looking for support in abusive situations via actually helpful posts in trouble when their adults see what they've been looking at. I remember what kind of issues I had at home before I learned how to clear my web browser history in the 90s - I can only imagine how much worse this could be in terms of surveillance of kids.

detcader 5y ago
Counterpoint: children should relegated to a class to be protected
- cmg 5y ago
  I probably wasn't clear enough - children should be protected for a variety of reasons, but they should also be consulted about the issues they face and how best to protect them.
  - detcader 5y ago
    There's nobody to consult. It's like making drone strike pilots more inclusive. Normalizing children posting pictures of themselves online is pure evil. Children's pictures shouldn't be posted publicly online, period. This goes for parents posting them too. Because they can't consent. We have never had anything like the internet before, where you can instantly put things into the global public record forever. I only hope people will to stop and think about this. History doesn't make one optimistic though

nkotov 5y ago

I had unfiltered internet access as a kid. When I was a preteen, I had a MySpace account by just simply lying about my age. A lot of my friends did the same. In middle school, we figured out ways to go around school district firewall/filter to access flash game sites. I honestly think that kids won't use "X for Kids" when they have access to devices. They will just figure out ways to get around the block and do what they want. For my children, I'm not giving them personal devices until an appropriate age and with an MDM to manage the device and set limits especially around how long they can spend on apps/device.

concinds 5y ago
> For my children, I'm not giving them personal devices until an appropriate age and with an MDM to manage the device and set limits especially around how long they can spend on apps/device. I didn't have internet access until age 10, and was only given a flipphone shortly after that. On the one hand, I was immature for my age and can imagine millions of ways in which things could have gone catastrophically wrong; and the way my parents did things feels pretty well thought out. But on the other hand, I'd have definitely preferred having local development tools, maybe a Raspberry Pi (didn't exist then), predownloaded PDF manuals, anything I could have tinkered with. Instead all I did before age 10 was play video games, since that (and typing documents) was all there was. In a world where kids grow up with computers from a young age, some will entertain themselves all day, and some will learn from program all day, and obviously have access to very different opportunities. I'm tempted to say: "no electronics until 10, etc" like some strict parents I know, but it does feel like an outdated attitude that can hinder kids as much as it helps them. Some of my friends at 13-15 played games all day, while some worked hard at school, had great extracurriculars, and still had access to the exact same tech. I'm convinced the problem is not technological but emotional/psychological, and that one day we'll figure out how to raise kids in a a way that you can give them unrestricted tech, and they'll experience all the benefits and no downside, we just haven't reached that level of "parenting science" yet to make it reproducible.

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Tempest1981 5y ago

Here's why supervision is hard: All text books and school assignments are now done online. Some grading is even outsourced to the textbook companies. Kids are skilled at switching between apps (alt-tab). Parents don't have time to hover over the kid and laptop for 2 hours each night. And kids have internet access at school, or at a friend's house, or at the stores nearby. Phones and laptops are difficult for parents to lock down.

annoyingnoob 5y ago

Stop trying to be Joe Camel. Edit: downvote all you want, but show evidence that Instagram is in any way healthy or appropriate for children, sure looks like trying to hook the next generation on Instagram, no different than Joe Camel with cigarettes.

verytrivial 5y ago

Are they use "pause" in the "pile into a heap and set alight" sense? Edit: I ask because Insta is still using the "your browser may have ways to block cookies" which I can't believe for a second is GDPR compliant.

helen___keller 5y ago

Forget "kids", I'm an adult and I'd love to have versions of all modern social media with the 'growth hacking' features axed. Remember the days before forever scrolling on Reddit? When Facebook timelines were chronological? When bullshit clickbait links didn't show up as "recommended" after you meticulously pruned bullshit clickbait groups from your feed? When Youtube didn't just autoplay down into the deep dark depths of crazytown? How about social media that's actually social instead of just being the same national outrage "conversation" being replayed in a slightly different setting?

flatiron 5y ago
At least for YouTube you can disable auto play.
- cube00 5y ago
  ...and yet it still manages to turn itself back on whenever you sign in again, when you cast to a new device...and you can't tell me the company that knows everything about me can't remember my preference for not wanting auto play. Other services seem to remember it just fine, I set it once on Netflix and have never needed to set it ever again.
- helen___keller 5y ago
  Actually, my issue with YouTube isn't really the autoplay per se, it's how the recommended videos (including autoplayed videos) go very aggressively into rabbit holes. I'll listen to an anime music playlist and my entire recommended video / front page becomes full of anime stuff. An in-law joins Youtube to watch bible study videos and now they're an avowed freedom fighter against the globalist satanist cabal running the world. That sort of thing.
  - stolenmerch 5y ago
    This is a feature and I love it. I don't want to subscribe to football channels, for example, but if I'm in the mood I watch a couple of them and then it shows me related videos for a few more hours and then it switches when I decide to search for cooking videos, of which I don't want to subscribe to either. Works great.

klyrs 5y ago

Why do I get the feeling that these "Parental Supervision Tools" is a ploy to force parents to make Instagram accounts, with all of the data harvesting that goes along with that? The alternative is to not make an Instagram for kids -- this approach uses the social pressure felt by kids to leverage parents into the next billion users...

jvvw 5y ago

The problem I've found with kids' platforms - thinking mostly of YouTube Kids but others too - is that they are so tied down that your children can't get to things that they or indeed that you want them to - often quite educational things, so you end up just giving them access to the adult versions because you want to support their interests. Also, the 'needing to be 12 years old' rule for many sites is a very handy one for parents as it gives you a solid reason for not giving permission for certain sites. It may be widely ignored but it's still very useful and enough parents do adhere to it, that you don't feel like you are making your children an outcast!

83457 5y ago
A service like Netflix should really have age groups. There is such a huge gap between kids and open access. Something like under 8, under 10, under 13, under 16 would be about it. Just because I don't mind if I let my 12 year old watch PG-13 movies doesn't mean I want them to start watching softcore porn in Game of Thrones.

bob229 5y ago

Delete. Your. Social. Media.

spoonjim 5y ago

I’d like to see an Instagram where you can’t post a picture of a person. So the competition becomes who can take the coolest photo. Of course that rewards kids with the resources to get to interesting places, but I think it’s less toxic to be compared for your means than it is to be compared for your appearance, especially for girls.

prpl 5y ago

I want to take a “trust, but verify” model with my kids, but all the different apps, capabilities, websites make it exceptionally difficult. Apple+ screen time is okay in centralizing some things , but I wish apps could expose some controls or logging to that or some other centralized service.

kitsune_ 5y ago

I wonder what Bill Hicks' take on "Instagram for Kids" would have been.

balls187 5y ago

"Don't blame us, kids are already online." What a tone deaf response.

twodave 5y ago

Instagram doesn't need to bother with this. Parents do. None of my kids will have access to this stuff unattended until they're mature enough to do other adult things on their own (like drive, get married, etc.). The Internet has never been a safe place for kids, and it never will be. I blame most of my adult issues on the fact that I had Internet access from a PC in my room from the age of 10. And that was more than 20 years ago when porn was harder to find and social media just consisted of yahoo chat rooms.

daniel-thompson 5y ago

Social media just makes it easier for kids to be awful to each other, and extends that opportunity from school hours to 24/7. This is not a not-having-the-right tools problem. It's a human nature problem, and no software will ever change that.

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gotsa 5y ago

I wonder how long will it take for society to ban all social media usage for people under 18 years old.

gordon_freeman 5y ago
It all depends on how soon Congress can act.
- strulovich 5y ago
  Does this include all multiplayer gaming (for example)? Doing as you suggest is basically what the Chinese government just enacted. If not, what sets one communication app from another?
TechBro8615 5y ago
It will come as soon as governments realize that's a great excuse for requiring an ID to connect to the internet. Think of the children, etc.
deleted 5y ago
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xanaxagoras 5y ago

I say do nothing and let the chips fall where they may. There's no big tech solution to this insanity. People born today will fall into 1 of 2 categories: 1. Those whose parents gave them phones as children 2. Those whose parents did not give them phones as children The former group will become fragile, suicidal narcissists who can't cope with or navigate the external world. They'll have soon-to-be trite problems like gender dysphoria and agoraphobia and will mistakenly think this makes them interesting or constitutes a personality. The later group will grow up as ordinary people by objective standards, but against the backdrop of the first group they will seem like they have superpowers - the Joe Bauerses of tomorrow so to speak. The internet and social media ruin all minds, but especially the child's mind. Hopefully once these two groups are well articulated and obvious to all, parents will start to make better decisions.

freeflight 5y ago
There are more than just these two categories, there are also parents who give their children phones and then heavily regulate usage with third-party tools.
mixmastamyk 5y ago
Was expecting to disagree, but then read the whole post. (^insert something about subscribing to your newsletter.)

etxm 5y ago

Kids need social networks, but they need them IRL. Instagram and Facebook are a scourge.

etxm 5y ago

> We believe building “Instagram Kids” is the right thing to do No it’s fucking not, you morally corrupt sacks of garbage.

raxxorrax 5y ago
Problem is if they do not, kids will hang out on TikTok. That said, I don't think content restriction will work for anyone at least a little bit curious. Good that kids aren't...

freeflight 5y ago

So they were trying to build an "Instagram Kids" without any thought about parental supervision? I guess the original plan was to just moderate all the content, until they realized how that wouldn't scale, so now the moderation will be outsourced to the parents: "Your kid found something nasty on Instagram kids? That's your fault because you didn't properly supervise it with the tools we gave you!"

tzm 5y ago

'You're Enough' by Laurence Fuller https://vimeo.com/537977184 https://vimeo.com/537977184

gilbetron 5y ago

As a parent of an almost 13 year old, I have no fucking idea what to expect from the next 5 years trying to raise him in this world. And I mean that literally, sometimes I think it's going to be great sometimes I think it's going to be 100% awful, I'm assuming it will be somewhere in the middle. I don't know what to expect. It's truly terrifying. I'd love any help getting perspective and developing techniques to survive and help my son navigate this new world he is growing into.

madrox 5y ago

I have a hunch -- and it's no more than a hunch -- that this has nothing to do with anything except the Metaverse. I think Facebook believes children won't grow up socializing on Instagrams and Tiktoks...they'll socialize in something that looks more like a virtual world, whether it's Fortnite or Minecraft or whatever the equivalent is in 5-10 years. Through that lens, it's perfectly appropriate to shift your investments.

Jonanin 5y ago

I find it strange that everyone loses their mind at the prospect of IG for kids, but no one bats an eye at the already-released YouTube for kids or TikTok for kids. The latter, of course, is built by a company entirely beholden to the Chinese government. That sounds pretty scary to me. I guess it's just a matter of what will make the best headline.

grvdrm 5y ago

Question for parents commenting on this: rather than block the apps, have you instead just blocked access to the services instead? E.g. blocking Instagram/Facebook/TikTok URLs from passing through your network? May seem silly and/or not even worth it but I'm curious about the different ways people are practically addressing this problem - control over the phone via app blocks, network blocks, taking phones away? What's working for you?