A year ago, Instagram was so concerned about the loss of teen users that decided to spend a large percentage of its marketing budget to reach teenagers.
An internal company report published in The New York Times said that “If we lose the support of teenagers in America, we will lose the future.”
Facebook, which bought Instagram for about $1 billion in 2012, was attacked earlier this month when a former product engineer named Frances Haugen leaked documents to The Wall Street Journal.
The documents revealed that Facebook’s own researchers found that Instagram is “harmful to a considerable percentage” of its young users, specifically for teenagers who may suffer from depression, anxiety and develop body image issues due to the use of the app.
Haugen also testified before Congress and said that the products offered by Facebook “They harm children, fuel division and undermine our democracy.”
As of 2018, most of Instagram’s annual global marketing budget spending was focused on messages aimed at teenagers. The budget for this year is 390 million dollars.
In March, it was discovered that Facebook was developing a version of Instagram for children under 13 who cannot join the Instagram website. Instagram Kids would not be designed as an adult version of the app as it would be ad-free and parents would be in control.
Last month, half a year after the initial Instagram Kids report leaked, Instagram announced it was stopping work on it. Despite halting the development of the children’s version of Instagram, Facebook continues to believe that “it’s the right thing to do”.