SAN FRANSCISCO — Children under 13 could start enjoying a version of the image-centric social network of Instagram that says it’s exploring to launch one with parental controls.
Amid concerns about difficulties in keeping underage children off the perilous world of social media, the news comes from Instagram, which confirmed a report by BuzzFeed News.
Adam Mosseri, who heads the Facebook-owned service, said on Twitter: “Kids are increasingly asking their parents if they can join apps that help them keep up with their friends.”
Mosseri added that “a version of Instagram where parents have control, like we did with Messenger Kids, is something we’re exploring.”
Facebook-owned Instagram, like its parent company, allows only those older than 13 to join but verifying age on the Internet makes it challenging to catch all rule breakers.
Concerns fired back at Mosseri in the Twitter exchange included worries about bullying or inappropriate content, reasoning that social networks are constantly battling those kinds of abuses.
“We don’t just give stuff to kids because they want it,” read a tweeted response to Mosseri from ‘a mom.’
“We don’t give kids dangerous tools to play with when grownups haven’t figured out how to make those tools safe.”
With more than a billion users, Instagram this week unveiled technology aimed at preventing underage children from creating accounts and blocking adults from contacting young users they don’t know.
It was the latest move responding to concerns about inappropriate contact between adults and children on the platform, which like most services sets an age minimum of 13.
Instagram will begin using artificial intelligence to determine a user’s age at sign-up in an effort to find underage users.
“While many people are honest about their age, we know that young people can lie about their date of birth,” a blog post this week said.
Additionally, the California giant said it would introduce a new feature that prevents adults from sending messages to people under 18 who don’t follow them, to prevent unwanted contact.
Instagram is also looking at ways to make it more difficult for adults who have been exhibiting “potentially suspicious behavior” to interact with teens, including restricting these adults from seeing suggested teen accounts.
Instagram working on child-friendly version of app
https://arab.news/9hx5k
Instagram working on child-friendly version of app
- A version of Instagram where parents have control, like done with Messenger Kids, is being explored, said Adam Mosseri, who heads the Facebook-owned service
- Instagram this week unveiled technology aimed at preventing underage children from creating accounts and blocking adults from contacting young users they don't know
To infinity and beyond: Grendizer’s 50 years of inspiring Arabs
- 50 years after its creation, the Grendizer anime series continues to capture Arab imagination
- Arab News Japan speaks to creator Go Nagai, Middle Eastern fans and retells the story behind the UFO Robot tasked with protecting our planet
LONDON: Few cultural imports have crossed borders as unexpectedly, or as powerfully, as Grendizer, the Japanese giant robot that half a century ago became a childhood hero across the Arab world, nowhere more so than in Saudi Arabia.
Created in Japan in the mid-1970s by manga artist Go Nagai, Grendizer was part of the “mecha” tradition of giant robots. The genre was shaped by Japan’s experience during the Second World War, and explored themes of invasion, resistance and loss through the medium of science fiction.
But while the series enjoyed moderate success in Japan, its true legacy was established thousands of kilometers away in the Middle East.
The anime “UFO Robot Grendizer” arrived on television in the region in 1979, dubbed into Arabic and initially broadcast in Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war. The story it told of the heroic Duke Fleed, a displaced prince whose planet had been destroyed by alien invaders, struck a chord with children growing up amid regional conflict and occupation by Israel.
Its themes of defending one’s homeland, standing up to aggression and protecting the innocent were painfully relevant in the region, transforming the series from mere entertainment into a kind of emotional refuge.
Much of the show’s impact came from its successful Arabization. The powerful Arabic dubbing and emotionally charged voice-acting, especially by Lebanese actor Jihad El-Atrash as Duke Fleed, lent the show a moral gravity unmatched by other cartoons of the era.
The theme song for the series, performed by Sami Clark, became an anthem that the Lebanese singer continued to perform at concerts and festivals right up until his death in 2022.
By the early 1980s, “Grendizer” had spread across the Middle East, inspiring fandoms in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and beyond. For many, it was not only their first exposure to anime, it also delivered lessons on values such as justice and honor.
Grendizer was so influential in the region that it became the subject of scholarly research, which in addition to recognizing the ways in which the plight of the show’s characters resonated with the audience in the Middle East, also linked the show’s popularity to generational memories of displacement, particularly the Palestinian Nakba.
Half a century later, “Grendizer” remains culturally alive and relevant in the region. In Saudi Arabia, which embraced the original version of the show wholeheartedly, Manga Productions is now introducing a new generation of fans to a modernized version of the character, through a video game, The Feast of The Wolves, which is available in Arabic and eight other languages on platforms including PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch, and a new Arabic-language anime series, “Grendizer U,” which was broadcast last year.
Fifty years after the debut of the show, “Grendizer” is back — although to a generation of fans of the original series, their shelves still full of merchandise and memorabilia, it never really went away.
