Facebook is working on an Instagram Kids app: Report

Reportedly, the internal announcement was made by Instagram's Vice President of the product, Vishal Shah. It was posted on the employee message board earlier this week.

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Facebook is reportedly building a new version of Instagram for kids under the age of 13. Currently, the Facebook-owned platform’s policy forbids children under 13 years of age to join the app. As per the internal company post acquired by BuzzFeed News, the company’s top priority while building the app is safety and privacy.

According to the report, the internal announcement was made by Instagram’s Vice President of the product, Vishal Shah. It was posted on the employee message board earlier this week.

“I’m excited to announce that going forward, we have identified youth work as a priority for Instagram and have added it to our H1 priority list,” wrote Shah on March 18. “We will be building a new youth pillar within the Community Product Group to focus on two things: (a) accelerating our integrity and privacy work to ensure the safest possible experience for teens and (b) building a version of Instagram that allows people under the age of 13 to safely use Instagram for the first time.”

The leak also suggests that the company’s kids project will be overseen by Instagram Head Adam Mosseri and Facebook VP Pavni Diwanji. Earlier, Diwanji worked on the YouTube Kids app with Google. The upcoming app is said to provide a parental-controlled experience helping kids communicate with their friends and discover new hobbies interest, as per a Facebook spokesperson’s statement to Business Insider.

This piece of information comes just days after Instagram mentioned in its blog that it is working on making the platform a safe place for kids. Instagram said that it is working on ways to ensure whether kids signing up are above the minimum age. This will be achieved by new artificial intelligence and machine learning technology which is currently in development. This will also help them filter inappropriate content for users under the age of 18.

In addition, a new safety feature has been introduced that will prevent adults from sending messages to users below 18 who don’t follow them. Instagram will send a notification to the adults that DM’ing them is not an option.

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