{"id":1492,"date":"2021-11-25T12:56:04","date_gmt":"2021-11-25T11:56:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/2021\/11\/25\/facebook-documents-reveal-company-targeted-children-as-young-as-6-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2021-11-25T12:56:04","modified_gmt":"2021-11-25T11:56:04","slug":"facebook-documents-reveal-company-targeted-children-as-young-as-6-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/2021\/11\/25\/facebook-documents-reveal-company-targeted-children-as-young-as-6-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook documents reveal company targeted children as young as 6 &#8211; NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"cfbc967f0983488262956e73eca9483a\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3859091246952232\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- blok -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3859091246952232\" data-ad-slot=\"1334354390\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n\n<\/div>\n<p>Sections<br \/>tv<br \/>Featured<br \/>More From NBC<br \/>Follow NBC News<br \/>Internal documents show that Facebook has been actively hiring employees to build products that target children as young as 6 to expand its user base.<br \/>\u201cOur company is making a major investment in youth and has spun up a cross-company virtual team to make safer, more private, experiences for youth that improve their and their household\u2019s well-being,\u201d wrote the author of a blog, whose name was redacted before NBC News was able to review the document. \u201cFor many of our products, we historically haven\u2019t designed for under 13.\u201d<br \/>In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/21095535-copy-of-young-people-philosophy_sanitized_opt-1\">the internal blog post<\/a> published April 9, the author wrote that the company planned to hire several positions as it expanded into offering its full range of products to children younger than its current threshold of 13 years old. Diagrams illustrate proposed new target age groups, ranging from kids 6 to 9 years old and tweens 10 to 12 years old &#8212; along with existing targets of early teens from 13 to 15 years old, late teens from 16 to 17 years old, and adults.\u00a0<br \/>\u201cThese five age groups can be used to define education, transparency, controls and defaults that will meet the needs of young users,\u201d wrote the Facebook employee.<br \/>Critics of the company say these documents are part of a long-standing pattern of Facebook attempting to attract younger users as early as possible.\u00a0<br \/>\u201cFacebook and Instagram have repeatedly shown that they simply can\u2019t be trusted when it comes to the well-being of children and teens,\u201d said James Steyer, the founder and CEO of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization that researches the relationship between children and the digital world. \u201cThey need to focus on cleaning up their existing platforms instead of trying to hook more children to their addictive platforms at younger and younger ages.\u201d<br \/>Facebook responded to a request for comment by referring to a blog post it had written in response to The Wall Street Journal\u2019s coverage of its efforts to attract younger audiences. \u201cCompanies that operate in a highly competitive space \u2014 including the Wall Street Journal \u2014 make efforts to appeal to younger generations. Considering that our competitors are doing the same thing, it would actually be newsworthy if Facebook didn\u2019t do this work,\u201d the post said.<br \/>The documents were included in disclosures made to the Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in redacted form by legal counsel for Frances Haugen, who worked as a Facebook product manager until May and has come forward as a whistleblower. Digital versions of the disclosures \u2014 with some names and other personal information redacted \u2014 were obtained by a consortium of news organizations, including NBC News. Most of the documents are digital photographs of company material on computer screens.<br \/>The post was shared on Facebook\u2019s internal message board. \u201cWe have a few researchers across the company kick-starting this virtual team and are hiring more as this work unfolds,\u201d wrote the author, explaining that the team was planning to expand by hiring people with experience in \u201cglobal research among youth (particularly kids, tweens, and their caregivers).\u201d The post lists jobs for categories like Messenger Kids\/Youth Platform and Instagram Child Safety and shared the name of the hiring manager for each role, which was redacted. Messenger Kids is a video calling and messaging app created by Facebook that is currently available for kids.<br \/>The post includes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/21095535-copy-of-young-people-philosophy_sanitized_opt-1\">a diagram titled<\/a> \u201cWhere we\u2019ve been and where we\u2019re going &#8230; \u201d explaining how the company plans to expand to audiences below its current threshold of 13. The document cites the Federal Trade Commission\u2019s current regulations around online services directed to children under 13 years old, called the Children\u2019s Online Privacy Protection Rule, or COPPA.\u00a0<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/21095535-copy-of-young-people-philosophy_sanitized_opt-1\">In a diagram<\/a> describing how the company currently works with young users, a note explains why the company has had a cutoff at age 13. \u201cThe COPPA line is simple: we treat 13+ like other users and ask younger people not to use our products.\u201d The adjacent diagram is titled \u201cAnd in the future\u201d and the \u201cstop\u201d line that represents current restrictions is removed and replaced by tiers of users including \u201cTweens 10-12\u201d and \u201cKids 6-9.\u201d The slide doesn\u2019t explain how the company would navigate current COPPA restrictions in the future.<br \/>In a slide titled \u201cYouth design requires attention to cognitive and social maturity,\u201d cartoon characters are used to describe different age groups, as young as kids 6 to 9 years old.<br \/>The post came just one week before a coalition of 35 organizations and 64 individual experts, coordinated by Fairplay, formerly known  as the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, a Boston-based nonprofit,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/tech\/social-media\/child-safety-groups-ask-facebook-asked-scrap-plans-instagram-kids-n1264112\"> raised concerns about privacy, screen time, mental health, self-esteem<\/a> and commercial pressure in a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.<br \/>\u201cThese documents make clear that instead of working to make its existing platforms less harmful to teens, Facebook\u2019s priority was to ensnare younger children and create a pipeline of lifetime users of Facebook products,\u201d Fairplay\u2019s executive director Josh Golin told NBC News. \u201cDespite Facebook\u2019s claims that their motivation for Instagram for Kids is to create a safer experience for preteens, it\u2019s clear the real reason is Facebook is fixated on kids to drive growth. Facebook products aren\u2019t safe for younger children, and a company that consistently puts profits ahead of young people\u2019s well-being has no business building platforms for kids.\u201d<br \/>In September, the head of Instagram, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/tech\/social-media\/instagram-pause-development-new-app-young-people-n1280150\">Adam Mosseri announced that the company would pause development<\/a> of a version of the photo sharing app for children. \u201cI still firmly believe that it\u2019s a good thing to build <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/facebook-instagram-kids-tweens-attract-11632849667\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a version of Instagram that\u2019s designed to be safe for tweens<\/a>, 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,\u201d he told Craig Melvin on NBC&rsquo;s \u201cTODAY\u201d show.<br \/>Facebook spokesperson Nkechi Nneji said that \u00ab\u00a0while we\u2019re still hiring these roles, they\u2019ll largely focus on new features we\u2019re building for teens (13-17) and parents.<br \/>Ezra Kaplan is a producer for NBC News.<br \/>Jo Ling Kent is the business and technology correspondent for NBC News.<br \/>&copy;&nbsp;2021 NBC UNIVERSAL<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/tech\/social-media\/facebook-documents-reveal-company-targeted-children-young-6-rcna4021\">source<\/a><\/p>\n<!--CusAds0-->\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SectionstvFeaturedMore From NBCFollow NBC NewsInternal documents show that Facebook has been actively hiring employees to build products that target children as young as 6 to expand its user base.\u201cOur company is making a major investment in youth and has spun up a cross-company virtual team to make safer, more private, experiences for youth that improve [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"googlesitekit_rrm_CAow1sXXCw:productID":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-classe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}