Strong risk in an age group vulnerable to manipulation. This is the alarm launched by an international coalition of consumers and child development experts on the Instagram project for under 13, an age group also protected by the GDPR, the European law on privacy. It is contained in a letter addressed to Mark Zuckerberg asking the founder of Facebook to abandon this plan. Meanwhile, for its traditional version, Instagram has decided to do a global test and give users the option of whether or not to view the like counter under the posts, which was removed in 2019.
The appeal to Zuckerberg to close the project for the under 13 comes from a group of 35 associations led by the Campaign for an ad-free childhood (CCFC), a non-profit organization. Among these associations – writes the New York Times – are the Center for Digital Democracy in Washington, the Africa Digital Rights Hub in Ghana, the Australian Council on Children and the Media, the Common Sense Media in San Francisco, the Consumer Federation. of America and the 5Rights Foundation in Great Britain. “While collecting valuable data and cultivating a new generation of users can be good for Facebook’s bottom line, it will likely increase the use of Instagram by children who are particularly vulnerable to the platform’s manipulation and exploitation functions,” the associations write.
At the end of March, the indiscretion of an Instagram plan dedicated to children under 13 led by Pavni Diwanji, hired by Facebook last December and who previously worked for Google on the YouTube Kids project, circulated. The company’s intent is to create an environment that is controlled and supervised by parents, after years of controversy and calls on the protection of younger users from cyberbullying and harassment. “The truth is, kids are already online. They want to connect with family and friends, have fun and learn, and we want to help them do it in a safe and age-appropriate way,” said Facebook spokesperson Stephanie Otway. Although Instagram and Facebook require users to be at least 13 at the time of signing up, many under 13s lie about age to create a profile. However, for the associations that signed the appeal to Zuckerberg, it is unlikely that children between the ages of 10 and 12 with an existing Instagram account will switch to a “child version” of the app. In Italy, following some news stories, the Privacy Guarantor asked TikTok, another platform widely used by the very young, to ask users for an age so as to intercept and delete the profiles of subscribers under 13.