Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram have ended up becoming the most popular social media platforms in the entire world, and this has resulted in them having significant power with regards to the kind of data that gets shared online. One thing that Facebook has been trying to do is expand its market share by offering apps that are designed to be used by children, and the first example of this sort of thing could be seen with its Messenger Kids app.
The company has received a lot of pushback for the app for a wide range of reasons, but this has not stopped the app from being used by around 7 million users which Facebook felt vindicated its efforts and demonstrated that there was clearly some kind of a demand for these kinds of services. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that Facebook is starting to branch out further into this demographic by making a kids friendly version of Instagram.
This version of Instagram as per Bloomberg is being internally referred to as Instagram Youth, and it has the potential to really help the company expand in ways that might not have been all that possible before. A number of problems can be seen with this sort of thing, though. For one thing, Facebook is not exactly known for taking the privacy of its users all that seriously, and since the users of this platform are going to be children these concerns end up becoming even more pronounced.
However, the true issue that many critics are finding with this kind of an app has to do with the kind of culture that tends to surround social media in the first place. Instagram in particular can be a very shallow place, and it often only shows you a surface level view of how people interact with the world around them. This places pressure on grown adults to change who they are and can lead to a wide range of mental illnesses that can have pretty severe symptoms if you think about it.
One can only imagine how much worse this would be for children. The main version of Instagram is available to people 13 years old and older, and these teenagers have been showing negative symptoms due to the pressure that can come with social media use. The impact on children would be far worse, but despite all of this criticism it appears that Instagram is pushing forward and will continue working on this project so it will be interesting to see where things end up going from here on out.
Read next: Facebook Launches Some Really Cool New Features for Messenger and Instagram
The company has received a lot of pushback for the app for a wide range of reasons, but this has not stopped the app from being used by around 7 million users which Facebook felt vindicated its efforts and demonstrated that there was clearly some kind of a demand for these kinds of services. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that Facebook is starting to branch out further into this demographic by making a kids friendly version of Instagram.
This version of Instagram as per Bloomberg is being internally referred to as Instagram Youth, and it has the potential to really help the company expand in ways that might not have been all that possible before. A number of problems can be seen with this sort of thing, though. For one thing, Facebook is not exactly known for taking the privacy of its users all that seriously, and since the users of this platform are going to be children these concerns end up becoming even more pronounced.
However, the true issue that many critics are finding with this kind of an app has to do with the kind of culture that tends to surround social media in the first place. Instagram in particular can be a very shallow place, and it often only shows you a surface level view of how people interact with the world around them. This places pressure on grown adults to change who they are and can lead to a wide range of mental illnesses that can have pretty severe symptoms if you think about it.
One can only imagine how much worse this would be for children. The main version of Instagram is available to people 13 years old and older, and these teenagers have been showing negative symptoms due to the pressure that can come with social media use. The impact on children would be far worse, but despite all of this criticism it appears that Instagram is pushing forward and will continue working on this project so it will be interesting to see where things end up going from here on out.
Read next: Facebook Launches Some Really Cool New Features for Messenger and Instagram
