Facebook Mulling Instagram Service for Kids Under 13

By Jeff Horwitz

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company was "early in thinking through" how an Instagram product for children under the age of 13 would work, adding that it would only launch such a service if it believed it would be beneficial for children.

The work to develop a kids product, first reported by BuzzFeed (https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-instagram-for-children-under-13), was met by skepticism by members of Congress who alleged that Facebook was already failing to protect teens from the harmful effects of social media.

Instagram requires users to verify their age and people younger than 13 aren't eligible to get an account. The new service would potentially join YouTube, which operates YouTube Kids, in creating a platform aimed at young users.

Mr. Zuckerberg said that Facebook had systems in place to find and mitigate any such harms and dismissed the idea that social media might be harmful to children.

"The research we've seen is that using social apps to connect to other people can have health benefits," he said. But he acknowledged that Facebook was internally researching such matters.

NOTE: In-line links reference additional content of interest chosen by the WSJ news team.

This item is part of a Wall Street Journal live coverage event. The full stream can be found by searching P/WSJL (WSJ Live Coverage).

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 25, 2021 15:33 ET (19:33 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.