In a surprise move, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri participated in an online forum with The Washington Post earlier this week. During his chat with the press, Mosseri stated it would be best if his company built an app for children under the age of 13.
“I get it’s an easy dunk, to dunk on the idea,” Mosseri told the Washington Post.
“But I think if you get into the details of this and you look at the actual practical realities, it’s, I think, a much more responsible path than where we are today.”
Currently, the app bars users under the age of 13, but users routinely push past this guideline by lying about their age. The app currently looks for red flags like other users wishing them a happy 10th or 11th birthday, but Mosseri believes that companies like Google and Apple could help out with age verification as well.
“We need to get better at age verification, I think that should happen at the operating system level not the app level,” Mosseri added.
Instagram has been routinely called out for its algorithms and their affects on young people. Critics have also raised concerns about privacy and screen time. By building a children’s app, Mosseri hopes that it would steer parents away from allowing their children to use the main app and move toward a healthier environment on the children’s app. With that said, Mosseri and his colleagues have not laid out a plan for when or how such an app would be launched.
