It’s hard to imagine a more predictable announcement than the one made by Facebook today. Less than two weeks after an uproar over the damage being done to teenage girls by Facebook’s Instagram, sparked by a Wall Street Journal report, is anyone surprised by today’s news that the company isn’t going forward with a version of “Instagram Kids”? The idea of letting Instagram target children, when there’s a widespread perception that the app is unhealthy for teen users, was politically a nonstarter.
The tragedy of this particular initiative is that it was undoubtedly the right thing to do. Instagram head Adam Mosseri’s statement that kids under 13 are already using the app by lying about their age is entirely believable. Offering them a more appropriate version, without ads, makes a lot of sense. Whether it would have worked is debatable: A diluted version of Instagram might not have appealed to kids, but it was worth trying. Facebook’s problem is that it has lost the trust of both politicians and the media, if not users. (Our story today on the Instagram Kids’ decision spells out that trust gap in detail.) This episode demonstrates the challenges Facebook faces in launching any new initiative that could expand its audience.
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