According to the latest reports, Facebook’s Instagram was worried that it would lose young users and spend a large part of its marketing budget on promoting the service to young people. Earlier, an insider leaked documents to The Wall Street Journal, which showed that Facebook was aware that Instagram might harm the mental health of teenagers.
The New York Times reported on Saturday that Instagram stated in an internal memo in October last year that If we lose our youth foothold in the United States, we will lose access. It is reported that the memo puts forward the marketing strategy for this year.
The report pointed out that starting from 2018, Instagram’s annual global marketing budget is almost exclusively used for information dissemination aimed at young people, and this year’s budget is 390 million U.S. dollars.
Marketers told the media that it is unusual to lock a certain age group to this level. The New York Times said that the final expenditure also includes information transmission to parents and young people. Instagram faces competition from young users from rivals such as TikTok and Snapchat.
After Facebook’s former product engineer Frances Haugen leaked documents to The New York Times, Facebook and Instagram were in trouble with young users. The media pointed out in its report that depression, anxiety and body image issues are areas of concern. Haugen also testified before the US Congress this month, claiming that Facebook’s products harm children, incite division and weaken democracy.
Facebook stated that the purpose and results of its research on Instagram were misrepresented, and the research actually showed that teenagers saw benefits from using the site. The social networking company pointed out that many teenagers told researchers that Instagram can help them in the struggle with the various difficult moments and problems that teenagers have been facing. Facebook did not respond to a request for comment on the New York Times report on Saturday.
Last month, Instagram suspended the development of Instagram Kids, a special service established for children under 13 who are currently not allowed to enter the existing Instagram website. The company said that the design of this service is different from the adult version, but it will be advertising-free and directly supervised by parents.
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Despite this guarantee, the news of the Instagram Kids Project shocked critics who were concerned about the mental health and privacy of young users. The 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act restricts the collection or storage of personal data of persons under 13 years of age.
The New York Times reported on Saturday that Facebook realized that ads targeting 13-year-olds might also catch younger children. The publication quoted an unnamed source as saying that managers told workers that Facebook did everything it could to prevent underage users from registering on Instagram, but they would still join.
Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, said that he still believes that the establishment of an Instagram children’s version is the right approach because children are already online and falsely reporting their age to access the service.