Facebook hits pause on Instagram Kids as concern mounts over impact on teens – CNET [CNET]

Instagram is hitting pause on the development of Instagram Kids, a dedicated service it’s building for children, in order to spend time focusing on developing parental supervision tools. It also intends to use the hiatus to persuade the wider world that the an Instagram app for kids is, in fact, a good and necessary thing.

The news that Instagram was working on a dedicated app for kids was first reported by Buzzfeed back in March. Instagram confirmed the service was in development, and was met with outrage from rights organizations, as well as bullying and mental health groups, who were all concerned about the impact of giving younger children access to social media. Over the past month, reporting by the Wall Street Journal, which raised concerns that Facebook’s internal research showed Instagram to be bad for teens, has caused pressure on the company to mount.

But even though Instagram is suspending work on its kids app for now, it’s likely it will still make an appearance in future.

In a blog post published Monday, Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri said he still believes building Instagram Kids is “the right thing to do.” As kids are already online and misrepresenting their age to access Instagram (which is only accessible to over-13s), he said that Instagram thought it was best children in the 10-12 age group have an age-appropriate service dedicated to them. Instagram Kids will not be designed to replicate the adult version of the app, but to be ad-free and overseen directly by parents, he added.

“Our intention is not for this version to be the same as Instagram today,” said Mosseri. “Parents can supervise the time their children spend on the app and oversee who can message them, who can follow them and who they can follow.”

In a follow-up tweet, Mosseri expanded on why Instagram decided to delay the project. Instagram Kids was leaked before the company was ready for it to be public, he said, meaning that Instagram was not ready to answer questions about it and allay people’s fears. Following the escalation in concern sparked by the WSJ’s reporting, it was clear the company needed to take more time over it, he added.

(Earlier on Monday, Facebook refuted the WSJ’s claims in a separate blog post, saying that its findings were misunderstood and misrepresented in the paper’s reporting.)

Mosseri said that critics of the Instagram Kids would be wrong to view the fact that the project was being put on hiatus as “an acknowledgement that the project is a bad idea.” Instead, the company wants to work with parents, experts and policymakers to demonstrate the “value and need” for Instagram Kids, while also continuing to build opt-in supervision tools for teens (aged 13 and over). “I hear the concerns with this project, and we’re announcing these steps today so we can get it right,” he said.