Facebook has announced that it will no longer allow advertisers to provide targeted advertising services based on the interests of people under the age of 18 or their activity on other websites. The change means that on Facebook, Messenger services and photo-sharing platform Instagram, advertisers can only serve ads to people under 18 based on age, gender or location information.
Instagram said on its blog that it made the change because it agreed with some supporters that young people may not be able to make accurate judgments about targeted advertising. Additionally, when Instagram users under the age of 16 join the platform, they will default to private accounts to prevent adults from overreaching.
Of course, they can also choose to switch to a public account. Facebook said that these changes will be implemented in a few weeks and will affect the main Facebook website, Instagram and Messenger.
Instagram for kids?
In May of this year, Instagram announced that it plans to develop a new version of the service for children under 13 years of age. But then the attorneys general of 44 US states and territories urged Facebook to abandon the plan. They believe that social media can influence the healthy growth of children. These states believe that Facebook does a poor job of protecting children.
Since then, the attitudes and ways in which young Facebook users are treated have attracted much attention. Facebook said today that the idea behind providing "special" apps for teenagers is to provide parents with more transparency. They also want parents to be able to monitor the behavior of young children who want to access Instagram.
In fact, several major social media companies have released versions of the apps for younger audiences. We have the likes of Facebook Messenger Kids and Alphabet's YouTube Kids. Supporters believe that children are already on the same platform, so the family version provides a safer environment.
But critics say Facebook shouldn't be trying to attract young children to its services. Many believe that children's development, their mental health and their personal lives will be at risk. Some users believe that children should not have a relationship with social networks. They believe that social media will somehow harm children's mental health.
They may be cyberbullied by their older peers or even peer pressured. To this end, the issue of social media for children remains a really controversial topic. In fact, many parents are not ready to have this conversation. Do you think children should have their own space on social networks?
