Online Beauty Contests or Photo Editor?

Instagram is a free smartphone app for iPhone or Android which allows users to add beautiful edging, color tints, and other special effects to photos and videos. But are there any reasons to be concerned about kids using it?

Like all other social networking software, Instagram requires kids to be at least 13 years old to create an account. And like Facebook, Instagram provides a special page where underage accounts can be reported for deletion. Teens accounts are considered off-limits to parents, and Instagram's rules point out that the company is "generally forbidden by privacy laws" against giving parents access to their kids' accounts.

As a photo styling app, Instagram excels, and the resulting photos can be stunning. However, where Instagram creates significant challenges for parents is in its "following" and commenting features. Like Twitter, users may "follow" other Instagram users, which gives them access to view and comment on any of that user's photos. By default, anyone can view your photos, videos, and other posts in Instagram. These features open the door to strangers following your kids' Instagram accounts, viewing their photos, and engaging them with comments. Many unsavory incidents of stalkers and adult strangers following kids have already been documented. I was disturbed to find several, unknown, grown men following my 10 year old niece's account.

Through the photo comment features of Instagram, cyberbullying has found a new medium. Kids may simply leave mean or slanderous comments on another kid's photo. Or they may participate in online beauty pageants, where kids rate the popularity, clothing styles, or photogenic qualities of each other. More well-documented instances of kids innocently creating beauty pageants with their friends have led to hard lessons in netiquette for some young kids. ABC News profiled a group of 9 year old girls who thought it would be fun to have a beauty contest in Instagram, until several of them became very upset at their friends' comments. The losers of that contest got a red "X" across their face, which probably doesn't make anybody feel beautiful.

If your child simply wants a great photo styling app with features similar to Instagram's, my favorite is called "fotor", and it's available free for iPhone or Android smartphones. There's also excellent MacOS and Windows versions, plus a great fotor website (all free).

So while Instagram is a powerful photo styling app, it's social networking features can lead to all sorts of damaging and even unintentional cyberbullying. Instagram is one of many social networking apps that is better left off a child's phone altogether, but if you want your kid to have access to the photo styling features, there are many features you should explore to help protect your child.

Besides the mandatory netiquette lessons a parent should frequently enforce with internet or phone-savvy kids, parents can also take the following steps with their child's Instagram app:

• Child accounts should not be public, but set to private, so that all followers must be manually allowed. In your child's Instagram profile, switch "Posts are Private" on
• Frequently monitor your child's success in allowing only known followers
• Create your own Instagram account and follow your child's account
• Frequently remind your child of proper Instagram netiquette: no beauty contests, no negative comments ever, and only positive language

Since Instagram is a smart phone app, parents can control whether or not kids even download it from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store, using the built-in parent controls for the iOS and Android platforms.

Instagram is currently free in 2013, however news reports are predicting that advertising will begin soon. There is excellent precedent for this. By September, 2013, Instagram had over 150 million active users, and, of course, the app is owned by Facebook.

Sources: 

Instagram Tips for Parents

http://help.instagram.com/154475974694511

"Instagram Pageants: New form of cyber-bullying", ABCNews
http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/special_reports&id=9097109

"Instagram Ads Are on the Way", Time.com
http://business.time.com/2013/09/09/instagram-ads-are-on-the-way/