Evaluating Instagram's Promises to Protect Teens

Instagram has spent years making promises about how it intends to protect minors on its platform. To explore its past shortcomings—and the questions lawmakers and regulators should be asking—I spoke with two of the authors of a new report that offers a comprehensive assessment of Instagram’s record on protecting teens:

• Laura Edelson, an assistant professor of computer science at Northeastern University and co-director of Cybersecurity for Democracy, and
• Arturo Béjar, the former director of ‘Protect and Care’ at Facebook who has since become a whistleblower and safety advocate.

Edelson and Béjar are two of the authors of “Teen Accounts, Broken Promises: How Instagram is Failing to Protect Minors.” The report is based on a comprehensive review of teen accounts and safety tools, and includes a range of recommendations to the company and to regulators.