Facebook wants to target children as young as 6 to expand its user base, internal documents reveal
Meanwhile, whistleblower Frances Haugen has urged Mark Zuckerberg to step down as Facebook CEO
Social media giant Facebook was considering new products to target children as young as six years old, according to internal documents leaked by whistleblower and former Facebook employee Frances Haugen.
Legal counsel for Frances Haugen shared the documents as a part of disclosures made to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as well as to the Congress in redacted form.
NBC News says they accessed a set of documents from an internal blog post (with author's name redacted) which highlighted that the social media company was making a 'major investment in youth' and looking to hire new employees with an aim to offer its entire line of products to users below the current threshold of 13 years.
Illustration in the blog post divided target users into five age groups - kids aged six to nine years, tweens aged 10 to 12 years, early teens from 13 to 15 years, late teens from 16 to 17 years, and adults over the age of 18.
"These age groups can be used to define education, transparency, controls and defaults that will meet the needs of young users," the blog post noted.
It also mentioned the current regulations by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) called the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA) for online platforms directed to children under 13 years of age.
Facebook currently asks users younger than 13 to not use the company's products, the post stated, adding that the company wanted to change that and start targeting children as young as six.
When asked by NBC News to comment on the revelation, Facebook referred to an earlier post it had written in response to the Wall Street Journal's report, which noted that the company was looking to attract younger audiences.
"Companies that operate in a highly competitive space - including the Wall Street Journal - make efforts to appeal to younger generations," Facebook's post said.
"Considering that our competitors are doing the same thing, it would actually be newsworthy if Facebook didn't do this work," it added.
Ms Haugen, who left the company in May, has provided thousands of Facebook's internal documents to lawmakers and regulators.
Last month, she testified before a Senate subcommittee in a hearing about the Facebook's research into the impact of Instagram on the mental health of teenagers.
In a separate appearance before a British parliamentary select committee, she said that Facebook was exacerbating online hate worldwide because its algorithms are designed to promote divisive content.
"The events we're seeing around the world, things like Myanmar and Ethiopia, those are the opening chapters because engagement-based ranking does two things: one, it prioritises and amplifies divisive and polarising extreme content and two it concentrates it," Haugen told the committee.
Speaking at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon this week, Ms Haugen urged Mark Zuckerberg to step down as Facebook CEO, saying it was "unlikely the company will change" if he [Zuckerberg] remains the company chief.
"I hope that he can see there's so much good he can do in the world and maybe it's a chance for someone else to take the reins. I think Facebook would be stronger with someone who is willing to focus on safety," the whistleblower added.
"My greatest hope is that Facebook will be a more successful company because we gave it some accountability."
She said it is "unconscionable" that Facebook is currently investing to build its virtual metaverse environment while the firm's own documents state that "there need to be more resources on very basic safety systems".