Cyber Safety

Why Instagram is spending millions to target your 13-year-old

How does Big Tech really see your child? As a fledgling digital citizen to be nurtured?  Or a pipeline to ever-greater profits?

To prevent children - aka future revenue - from defecting to a competing app, Instagram has been stalking the teen market like a digital sheep in wolf’s clothing, according to internal documents released this week. The unsuspecting target? “Early high school-ers” - classified as 13- to 15-year-olds.

Why this age group? Because it represents the major conduit to Instagram’s parent, Facebook, whose ageing user base has been a major concern for the company’s future profitability. Instagram, the thinking goes, is like the training wheels. Facebook is the racing bike.

“If we lose the teen foothold,” read a 2020 Instagram strategy memo, “we lose the pipeline.”

According to the most recent surveys, only 22% of teens say Instagram is their number-one social media platform - trailing both Snapchat (which Facebook tried and failed to acquire in 2013) and TikTok.

Worries about the slow but steady leakage of kids’ engagement, Instagram executives slated nearly its entire global marketing budget to luring them back.

If we lose the teen foothold,” read a 2020 Instagram strategy memo, “we lose the pipeline.”

The average time teens spent on Instagram during the pandemic was three to four hours. That represented a 200% bump over pre-COVID usage. But more recently, with restrictions lifting, classrooms re-opening and “teen time spent” declining, company executives have been panicking. 

Desperate to retain and grow young users, whose attention is notoriously fickle, the company has scrambled to re-assert its dominance, pouring millions into digital ads aimed squarely at hitting teen targets. 

The disclosures could not have come at a worse time for the company. Last month, the Wall Street Journal published a bombshell investigation revealing Facebook has long known that Instagram poses a serious mental health risk to vulnerable teen girls.

And former manager turned whistleblower Frances Haugen testified before the US Senate that the company deliberately engineered the platform to create compulsive use by kids. 

Undeterred, Instagram head Adam Mosseri’s vision statement for the company described the app as “a place where young people define themselves and future,” adding that “young people and creators are at the forefront of emerging culture, which is where Instagram plays.” 

Last month, under unrelenting public pressure, Instagram paused its work on a version of the app targeting kids under 13. But Mosseri has insisted that “building ‘Instagram Kids’ is the right thing to do” and has promised a service featuring safety measures and content geared to tweens aged 10-12.

“The reality,” he said, “is that kids are already online.”

Reference: https://www.familyzone.com/anz/families/blog/instagram-targets-teens

Cyber Safety Hub

We are delighted to introduce you to a new resource made available to you through our partnership with Family Zone - our new school Cyber Safety Hub. 

As you may already be aware, our partnership provides your family with access to the Family Zone tools to use at home with your children if you wish. The purpose of the Cyber Safety Hub is to complement those tools with practical guidance and information to further support you in engaging with your children in their digital development. These tools and resources also allow the school and parent body to work together on creating a holistic approach to guiding each student's online journey. 

About the Parent Cyber Safety Hub 

The Cyber Safety Hub includes resources to help your family better understand the different Family Zone tools available to you and how to use them, plus access to regular cyber safety events to help you stay informed about the latest digital trends. 

Also, the Cyber Safety Hub provides expert advice from leading cyber experts, ySafe, on the most pertinent issues and frequently asked questions around platforms like TikTok, Fortnite, Instagram, and more. There are app reviews with age and safety recommendations, along with a range of guides to help ensure healthy boundaries around screen-time & gaming, plus step-by-step instructions for using parental controls and filtering out inappropriate content. 

We are very excited to be able to offer you this level of expertise and support. We look forward to working closely with you as we develop the cyber safety conversation within our school community.