That Instagram has a complicated relationship with minors It is a fact more than accredited over time and especially in the last year and a half. Although this service has now been overtaken by TikTok as the favorite for this audience, there are still a large number of minors who use Instagram on a daily basis, which the social network tries to support and maintain by taking measures to ensure that parents trust the platform enough. network to allow their children to use it.

The problem is that despite these measures Instagram collects a rather dubious history. In April of last year, his plans to create an Instagram for kids became known, which itself is controversial (and in fact it was so disputed that Meta was forced to put the project on hold), and that it only got worse when Shortly After , leaked the results of some studies conducted by the company and they have come to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt the terrible effect of Instagram on the mental health of the youngest.

However, while Instagram’s underage problem has become particularly public and notorious in 2021, it has actually been going on for longer and one of them will reach a tipping point very soon. And it is, as we can read in TechCrunch, The European Union will decide on the investigation in the coming weeks started in September 2020, about how Instagram uses the data of minors.

How could the media find out this announcement is expected between the last week of August or the first week of September at the latestalthough its meaning is not known, that is, if the European organization determines that Instagram must make changes in its operation to adapt to the protection that the GDPR determines for the little ones, and also if the fine will be lifted for the way it has worked until now.

Investigation was initiated by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC)the chief data controller of Meta in the European Union, but has moved from this body to the European Data Protection Board, the body responsible for ensuring uniform application of the General Data Protection Regulation in the European Union.

CPD Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle confirmed that the decision complies with the European regulator’s conflict resolution procedure under Article 65 GDPR:

«Last week we received a response from the European Data Protection Board. […] We will have a decision… at the end of the last week of August or the first week of September. It should be finished by the first week of September«.

An investigation based on the complaint determined that Instagram would allow minors to create professional profileswhich in turn would mean that companies could have access to their data even though the GDPR prohibits it.

The regulator confirmed today that the scope of its investigation covers the handling of children’s data for professional Instagram accounts; and also a second element related to the user registration system that the platform managed, which it found could result in the accounts of underage users being configured as “public” by default. unless the user has changed their account settings to “private”.