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Instagram for kids may be coming, but public health experts want to press the pause button

By technology reporter James Purtill
Posted , updated 
Group of friends using their phones
Instagram is "exploring" plans for a version of Instagram for under-13s.(Getty: Flashpop)
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For parents of young children, the question of "screen time" is often a vexed one.

How much is too much? 

Is it OK to let them sit quietly, eyes glued to the screen?

Earlier this year, a leaked memo revealed Facebook was considering making phones even more enticing for children by potentially developing a version of Instagram catering to and targeted at under 13s.

The response, as you might expect, was a general outcry.

A global list of prominent public health and child advocacy experts promptly co-signed a letter expressing their concern.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in front of an Instagram logo
Mark Zuckerberg has received letters of protest over his plans.(Getty: Kyodo News)

They pointed to the fact social media use among young teenagers has been associated with issues around body image, self-esteem, bullying, and depression. Why introduce these problems to children?

Facebook will no doubt apply the dark arts of platform design — of algorithms and personalisation — to hook children's attention.

And if adults struggle to resist these tricks of manipulation, what chance do children have?

"While collecting valuable family data and cultivating a new generation of Instagram users may be good for Facebook's bottom line, it will likely increase the use of Instagram by young children who are particularly vulnerable to the platform’s manipulative and exploitative features," the groups said in the letter to Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg.

Last week, a second protest letter was delivered to Facebook — this one from more than 40 attorneys general in the US calling on the company to "abandon its plans" for an Instagram for kids under the age of 13.



Social media companies are increasingly targeting children

But though the "Instagram for kids" idea has received a lot of attention, Facebook is not alone among social media companies looking to target children. 

The children's demographic is increasingly seen as both an untapped new audience and a way to secure future ones: pre-teen users of an Instagram for kids would naturally sign up to the adult version when they were older.


Meanwhile, YouTube for Kids (launched in 2015) has become a content juggernaut. Marketing companies now promote a new crop of "children influencers" with millions of subscribers as a way for brands to target a younger demographic.

And stuck between the children and the dangled treats of children's content are the parents, who are generally told that too much screen time is dangerous and they are responsible for limiting their children's access.

The result? Conflict.

Screen time has become a source of conflict in families

From his children's internet addiction clinic in northern Sydney, psychologist Brad Marshall has observed the steady creep of screen use among children over the past decade.

Along the way, he's noticed a change in the type of cases that come through the doors of his clinic. Most are about negotiating screen time — in particular, about the fact some children simply don't want to negotiate.

Psychologist Brad Marshall being interviewed by 7.30
Brad Marshall says he received "hundreds of messages a day" about screen time.(ABC News)

"Ten years ago, screen issues might have been 20-30 per cent of my caseload," Mr Marshall said.

"But in the last five to six years, it's been pretty much exclusively just screen issues."

In some "extreme cases", he says, children have become violent when their screens are taken away.

"Parents getting into rip-roaring arguments with kids over screens is one of biggest things we deal with," he said.

He sees similar stories on Facebook parenting groups. At one point, having agreed to moderate one of these groups, he found himself receiving "hundreds of messages a day from parents" on the topic of negotiating screen time.

"I couldn't keep up," he said.

... but is that just because there are more screens?

Why screen time is emerging as a major source of conflict within families isn't clear, though there are several possible explanations.

Unfortunately for parents looking for answers about a healthy amount of screen time, the competing theories come to very different conclusions.

The first explanation is that the change is neurological: excessive screen time is atrophying parts of children's brains associated with impulse control and reward and making them less able to manage their emotions.

Proponents of this theory point to studies that have used brain scans to show an association between increased screen time and a thinning of grey matter in the frontal lobe.

The second explanation is that screens are inevitably a source of conflict within families because they've become a greater part of our lives.

Ten years ago, most of today's most popular apps hadn't been invented.

Australians spend about one-third of their day in front of screens and probably even more than that now, with COVID and the shift to working and studying from home.

According to this theory, parents are needlessly anxious about the negative effects of screen time and thus are over-policing their children's use.

This creates conflict. At the root of the problem, some say, is the demonisation of screen time itself.

Measuring the effect screen time has on the brain

Wayne Warburton, an associate professor in developmental psychology at Macquarie University and a leading expert on the effect of extended amounts of screen time on the brain, subscribes to the first theory.

Dr Warbuton, who's also the vice-president of the Australian Council on Children and the Media, which co-signed the letter in April about a children's version of Instagram, painted a dire picture that would be familiar to anyone who's watched the documentary The Social Dilemma.

Children's consumption of "mindless" content is atrophying parts of their brains, he said, while large companies are looking to exploit this by building platforms that, like pokie machines, use a strategy of endlessly deferred gratification to hook them into staying.

A screenshot of the popular console game Fortnite: Battle Royale.
The popular game Fortnite made more than $US2 billion profit in its first two years,(Supplied: BagoGames)

He believes most social media counts are "mindless", and the same goes for YouTube for Kids.

(It's worth pointing out that a US government committee recently described the platform as a "wasteland of vapid, consumerist content" in which only 4 per cent of the videos had educational content.)

"When you're using media that's mindless, where you're consuming but not engaging with it cognitively, the brain starts to atrophy," Dr Warburton said.

This explains the aggression reported by Mr Marshall, he said.

"Screen addiction is correlated with high levels of aggression."

'Wait and see' for results of ongoing studies

"Screen addiction" is not recognised as an official disorder, like a drug or even gambling addiction.

In 2019 however, the World Health Organization took a step towards recognising screen addiction when it added "online gaming disorder" to its official list of mental health conditions.

It essentially acknowledged the possibility that people could get addicted to online gaming.

For Dr Warburton, the distinction between gaming and other kinds of screen time is not critical.

Whether a child is playing a "mindless" game or watching a "mindless" video, he said, parts of the brain will still atrophy.

Multiple brain imaging studies show individuals with online gaming addiction have significant atrophy in various areas of the brain, such as the frontal lobe, that are responsible for self-control and reward pathways.

But he acknowledged the picture is not complete: the current brain imaging studies have not tracked what happens to the brain over time, including whether the atrophied parts grow back.

"We really have to wait and see," he said.

Several longitudinal studies have begun and initial results from one of these, which is ongoing, show nine and 10-year-olds in the US who use smartphones and tablets more than seven hours a day are more likely to have premature thinning of the cortex — the outermost layer of the brain where most information processing occurs. 

"Under two hours a day you don’t see much, but over that you start to see effects," Dr Warburton said.

"And over seven hours a day, you see changes you don't want."

'Not all screen time is equally harmful'

Michael Dezuanni, a professor in digital media and learning at the Queensland University of Technology and the chief investigator of a recently launched national research centre on the effects of digital technology on children, has a very different theory to explain why screen time has become a source of conflict within families.

"I'm not at all surprised it would turn up in counselling sessions," he said.

"But screen time being a source of conflict is in some respects a separate issue to the screen being the problem."

Screen time is partly a source of conflict, he said, because we have made it so.

The focus on addiction and the idea that different types of screen time are equally harmful is simply making parents anxious.

The current Australian government advice is for no more than two hours of screen time per day for children.

But Professor Dezuanni said a better approach would recognise that, for example, children posting selfies on Instagram shouldn't be put in the same category of potential harm as them playing Minecraft or watching YouTube.

Girl on phone posing with kitten face
Children under 13 are able to lie about their age to get on Instagram.(Getty: Artur Debat)

"What we've seen with COVID is that those guidelines around being on screens for two hours a day become a bit of nonsense," he said.

This brings us back to Facebook exploring plans to develop a version of Instagram for children.

Like Dr Warburton, Professor Dezuanni doesn't want to see this happen, though for different reasons.

"The difference with Instagram is that the whole focus is on self-representation," he said.

"When children self-represent, they might not have the ability to know what’s an appropriate self-representation to share with others.

In a statement made in April, a Facebook spokeswoman said the company would not show ads in any Instagram product developed for children younger than 13, and that it planned to consult with experts on children’s health and safety on the project.

"The reality is that kids are online," the spokeswoman said.


Posted , updated