Parents To Facebook: Don't Make A Kid-Only Instagram, Just A Better Instagram

Parents and tech companies are both struggling with how to handle underage kids using social media apps. Rick Bowmer/AP hide caption toggle caption Rick Bowmer/AP Parents and tech companies are both struggling with how to handle underage kids using social media apps. Rick Bowmer/AP Social media companies prohibit kids under 13 from signing up because of federal privacy law. But parents like Danielle Hawkins can tell you a different story. “She got on Instagram and Snapchat without my approval when she was about 12,” Hawkins, a mom of four who lives near Detroit, said of her eldest daughter. The tech companies are well aware of this problem. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told a congressional hearing in March that his company knows kids get around the age limits on apps like Instagram, the photo-sharing network Facebook owns. “There [are] clearly a large number of people under the age of 13 who would want to use a service like Instagram,” he said. Now, Facebook is working on a solution for underage kids: “We’re exploring having a service for Instagram that allows under 13s on, because we worry that kids may find ways to try to lie and evade some of our systems,”…
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