Dear Zuckerberg, We're writing to urge you to cancel Instagram for children [pdf]

I have just a 2yo and a t-6m so I do not have to worry about these things. Yet the way you handle it sounds a bit too strict. You sure that maybe strict limits on screen time and YouTube together with speaking about what they consume would not teach them more?

I tell parents about the reasons to avoid this stuff all the time and many of them are so exhausted it's more of a "whatever, they will be fine" type of response (more politely of course, but that's the gist of it).

I feel it now too. My kids are in middle school and all their friends are getting phones. All I hear about is "Everybody else can do X! We're the only ones that can't."

I let them have stretches of unlimited game access and when I saw what it was doing, took them away. After experiencing it, when I explained how the games work to make them addicted and the things that we saw changing in their behavior they understood and at least now they take a lot of what I say more seriously when I warn them. So that's a positive.

I have backed off on some things due to the pandemic just to make it easier to play with their friends (Fortnite, Roblox, etc). Previously my generally rule was "no iPad/iPhone/Touchscreen games" but just about anything on the Switch/Xbox was fine. I find that games that you purchase vs games that are free don't have anywhere close to the same tilt toward addiction, ad feeds, timed rewards, etc. I also don't see the negative behaviors that came from these either.

Over time, their friends parents seem to be going the other direction and getting more strict with the electronics, so I'm hearing less "why can't we" and more "he can't play anymore today".

Social stuff though...zero chance. None. It's a disease.

Also Yes, it should be illegal to sell them cigarettes and beer.

With this said, I don't exactly understand how an instagram for children can possibly hope to NOT run afoul of COPPA. All it takes is one child uploading a single photo of themselves or their siblings, or referring to a friend by name in a comment, or heck even just using their real name in their username...

You’ll get really sick of downloading every. Single. Minecraft redstone tutorial for them.

While perhaps setting parental controls is trying to be simple and parents can get somebody's help with it, the second part like downloading video from youtube and playing it on VLC is way beyond most people. Especially that's not officially supported by YT.

Given Facebook has a monopoly in social networks, it's entirely reasonable to hold them to a higher standard and question the impact of new products which use their monopoly power to launch.

Yes, I mean parents should be responsible not to use leaded paint. And parents should be responsible for making sure they don't buy a crib that can suffocate their infant. And parents should be responsible for making sure pajamas are not going to catch on fire. And parents should be responsible for making sure that their kids avoid cigarette ads targeted to kids (like Joe Camel).

With kids, if there is a certain threshold of danger from something, especially if it is being targeted to kids, I think society should regulate (see alcohol and tobacco). I think there is increasing evidence that certain types of social media are harmful to kids.

For example, my kids did not get phones. But all of their friends had them. Which meant my kids would just create accounts for these services on their friends phones and just post whatever they wanted without me being able to control it.

A second example is when their friends get new phones. Guess what they do with the old phone? They give it other kids who don't have them. Sure, they don't have a cell plan. But that doesn't stop them from using wifi at starbucks or any other place.

I had technophobe parents like this. When other kids got technology I had to do without to build character or whatever.

Lesson I learned is that adults are mostly pretty dumb and stubborn. Haven’t seen ‘em in 15 years.

There are two ways to look at this, imo:

(1) Individual parents. Absolutely agree. If you are one, do your research and limit internet use.

(2) Societally... It's hard. Culture doesn't move as fast as tech does. If SV culture isn't totally caught up, where is the average culture? It's hard because "think totally independently" isn't how people work, at least not all the time. Especially when it comes to parenting, people rely on norms.

Meanwhile, it's hard to control those little Bs.

During normal times, they’ll just get it from their friends or schoolmates. Unless you can surveil the kids all the time, this method alone won’t help.

Easy to say from an ivory tower.

Not everyone is you. Some people have two jobs. Some people travel a lot. Some people have to take care of sick relatives. Some people have hard jobs that consume a lot of time. Some people are poor. Some people don't have great education. Some people are simply not capable of doing all the things that you do.

It's very SV Bubble to make bad products available and then blame the parents when they damage their children. That's not how a civilized society works. It's why we have a Consumer Products Safety Commission.

Why can Facebook just do the right thing and not target children? Why is Facebook making money more important than everything else in the world?

That said, I don't appreciate that there are people out there like Zucc, who are making it their business to create even more things I have to say no to, and specifically targeting them at kids. Just like those people out there making kids games that are essentially casino gambling, but just barely on the safe side of the legal line. Thanks, a lot assholes, for adding no value to the world and giving me yet another thing to forbid my kid from doing.

By the way, I can almost guarantee you that your kids will find a way to get themselves smartphones before you officially allow it. Kids are resourceful, and there's nothing as tempting as something their parents tell them they can't have.

I think Apple and Android offer some fairly powerful tools to manage these things? But I've found that routers, even in 2021, are just trash garbage at offering these kinds of powers.

For example, they encourage the use of the calendar app for tracking assignments and test dates. They use the camera to capture information for homework. Kids have projects that sometimes involves recording audio or shooting video. There's also a twitter-like app that the teacher can use to broadcast to students and students can use to communicate with the teacher.

But no matter how much work I put in to tailoring my feed, it just shows me half naked people that aren't my friends.

But in current conditions, sadly this trash will continue to harm our children if parents as well as those big tech companies don't tackle the problem seriously. It's sad that even they promote or allow it directly or indirectly.

Fortunately there are parents aware about this flagellum and it's harmful impact in the society, specially in our young people. And they don't allow that this happens to their children.

Perhaps a lesson in how to use a firewall first. :-D

With YouTube the answer is moderation and it has to be taught by parents, by education institutions and so on. This is also valid for grown ups. One can look for information on YouTube but veer onto temptation's path and sink a lot of time that gets taken from something else. But a bit of meandering into wherever it takes us and in moderation is great for discovering new things.

Could even feature some YouTube content that's vetted by teachers, re-uploaded and properly monetized of course. Uploads being ultimately restricted to teachers holding credentials and peer-moderated.

These days many kids have cell phones. For better or worse, that's what parents are doing. I don't know why, I'm not a parent and I don't know any children, but I know that as a young kid a cell phone allowed me to walk home alone or with another kid at an early age, so I can imagine justifications.

Anyway, I don't see why this should be on parents to manage, or how that would be effective.

No, it seems like zuckerberg should justify why this needs to exist. There doesn't need to be an Instagram for children. What benefit to children get by having an Instagram. Why should this now be an issue for parents because zuck figured he could monetize children?

Kids are resilient, but I imagine many parents don't like the thought of their kid missing out on context/social interaction because the lazy-parents kids let them do whatever they want.

No, if something is harmful and addictive it should be regulated, parents or not.

Instagram should not be free to get away with addicting children to social media because some parents are not as attentive as they should be. Children should be legally protected from this predatory behaviour by tech ogilarchs looking to embed themselves into the behaviour of young children.

Why not a kid's gambling site? I mean, it seems like an issue for parents to manage. Children don't have the resources so it shouldn't be regulated, right?

It's predatory, and should be regulated, and heavily punished.

For these, excepting PBS I think, monetary motivation is the same. More engagement equals more opportunity to show 'Baby Bottle Pop commercials'.

One major difference is gov't regulation over open airwaves (in America at least). There is no regulation in the app/product domain. Amazon Fire and Instagram are bound to whatever company moderation policies are in place at Amazon and FB (and App store moderation at Apple/Google).

Free capitalism is sacred and parents are the only ones who should care about the wellbeing of their children. Society doesn't exist and no one is responsible for the wellbeing of anyone else beyond their own nuclear family.

The kids are ultimately the ones who suffer so why not just prevent the problem at the root cause by disallowing Instagram for kids.

When they grow up they will have to deal with this, teaching them the skill on how to navigate social media will be beneficial.

I never used any of them, so I'm wondering if they still exist.

Instagram started asking some accounts for ID 8 months ago.

https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/introducing-n...

Facebook has asked for ID for years now.

Sure, cereal companies know that big boxes with cute characters at kid-height sells sugar pops. But Facebook knows every like, every friend request, every post, every message... check-ins at businesses. They combine the social anxiety of adolescence with advertising. It’s sick. Adults are easily manipulated. Children even more so.

And when you bring up those other advertisement pathways: they’re manipulative too!

So to answer your question, I don’t know how it would be appealing, but I think they find it appealing anyway independent of whether we know why, so it’s probably worth revisiting your priors.

Edit to add: A lot of teachers are also trying to be hip and cool. Three times in the past year I have been assigned "tiktok" assignments where I either had to record a tiktok or watch a tiktok. Of course there were other options that I took, but if some kid doesn't have it simply because they don't care, not out of privacy reasons, they'd probably download and start using it regularly after thinking a grade rides on it.

That's another thing: I am 100% serious when I say that my peers are addicted to tiktok. I know people who regularly spend 6+ hours a day just scrolling through it. In fact, I don't know anyone who doesn't spend at least 2 hours daily on it. I don't think any other social media comes close to it in addictiveness. It is literally almost everyone I know, even tangentially.

This post contained no profanity, but that is only because of Hacker News’ general policy of civil discussion. I’m. Furious.