That Instagram is very interested in teenagers is something that is beyond doubt. Of course, when I say that you are interested, I do not mean that you care about them or anything like that, it would be missing more. I mean that, given that Facebook barely arouses interest among the youngest, and that little by little the age of Instagram users is also rising, the company sees as a serious risk not having any service that has the approval of adolescents.
Personally, That every day there are fewer teenagers interested in Instagram seems to me excellent news. And it is that after learning that internal company reports recognized the pernicious effect of the service on adolescents, not only did they not take action in this regard and continued to act as if such a thing, they also continued to advance their plans to create a version Instagram special for kids. Why wait until they are teenagers to make them start suffering the worst consequences of social networks?
At the same time that these plans became known, many voices were raised against the project of an Instagram for children, and after learning that the United States Senate would initiate an investigation after the leak of internal reports on Harmful effects on teens, Facebook has been forced to pause Instagram for kids. I emphasize in the term: pause. Has not been canceled the project has only been temporarily stopped.
And what is Facebook doing in the meantime? What are your plans regarding adolescents? Well, as we can read in Business Insider, at the moment their main concern is to continue attracting them to the service, to the point that most of your advertising budget goes to attracting teens. And we are not talking about a very tight budget, far from it, the amount planned for this year is 390 million dollars.
And why does Instagram direct the vast majority of its budget to campaigns aimed at teenagers? Well, because although the network still has many users in those ages, other services such as Snapchat and TikTok are more attractive to that audience, which means that little by little they see their quota of adolescent users decrease. And no, in case you are thinking about it, I am not arguing about it, mainly because I believe that jumping from one social network to another does not solve the problem of adolescents on social networks.
Be that as it may, it is a bit difficult for me to express myself without resorting to quite thick words. And it is that if the Instagram for children already seemed an outrage to me, and knowing that the company had studies that proved its harmful effects on adolescents and that it continued to act as if such a thing turned my stomach. Find out that, with that information in hand, they have dedicated their marketing budgets to attract precisely that audience … yes, you can imagine what I’m thinking.
