A children’s version of the photo and video-sharing app Instagram has been stopped in its tracks following concern that it would have a negative impact on the mental health and wellbeing of youngsters.
Facebook, who also owns Instagram, made the announcement to halt the development of the new version on Monday.
This news comes shortly after a Wall Street Journal Report detailed that Facebook officials had internal research in March 2020 showing that Instagram is harmful to teen girls’ body image and well-being but swept those findings under the rug to continue conducting business as usual.
According to a story that appeared in The Conversation: “Instagram is also risky for teens because its emphasis on pictures of the body leads users to focus on how their bodies look to others. Our research shows that for teen girls – and increasingly teen boys – thinking about their own bodies as the object of a photo increases worrying thoughts about how they look to others, and that leads to feeling shame about their bodies. Just taking a selfie to be posted later makes them feel worse about how they look to others.”
Chief of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, said during an interview on NBC that there had been a misunderstanding about creating a child-friendly version of the app and that it would have been parentally supervised.
He stood firmly by the company’s decision. “I still firmly believe that it’s a good thing to build a version of Instagram that’s designed to be safe for tweens,” said Mosseri. “But we want to take the time to talk to parents and researchers and safety experts and get to more consensus on how to move forward,” he added.
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