Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, was in New York earlier this month.
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Facebook Inc. will pause the development of its Instagram for kids project, Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, said in an interview on the Today Show Monday.
The social-media app, owned by Facebook Inc., had been developing a version for children that would be ad free and allow parents to monitor their children’s activity.
“I still firmly believe that it’s a good thing to build a version of Instagram that’s safe for tweens, but we want to take the time to talk to parents and researchers and safety experts and get to more consensus about how to move forward,” Mr. Mosseri said in a Monday-morning appearance on NBC’s “Today” show.
The company’s plan for a kids’ version has faced criticism this year from lawmakers concerned that the app can be harmful to young people’s mental health. The new platform was to be designed for children younger than 13. Instagram bars children younger than that from its platform, but acknowledges that many join anyway.
The Wall Street Journal reported this month that internal research conducted by Facebook found that Instagram is harmful for a sizable percentage of young users, most notably teenage girls.
“We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” said one slide from 2019, summarizing research about teen girls who experience the issues.
Write to Matt Grossman at matt.grossman@wsj.com
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