Instagram chief's children don't use Instagram — so why should ours?

Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, in an interview he gave a few days ago, made confessions on a normal plane of thought that would drive all parents to take radical decisions for their precious children: "My children don't use Instagram."

Just think... None of his three sons, aged ten, eight, and six, can touch the world's largest social media application that their father sits at the head of.

So let us ask: Why does the man at the very top of Instagram so carefully shield his own children from the medium he developed day and night, and for which he makes special efforts so that the whole world follows it with interest?

We could point out that his children are under the age of 13. Because opening an account on Instagram is prohibited for those under 13. Meanwhile, in many countries, including Türkiye, age limits of 15-16 have been introduced. In other words, the world has begun to agree that the age limit Instagram has set is not safe for children.

But the point I want to draw attention to is this: Adam Mosseri, as a "father" who is aware that children's minds are being occupied through social media platforms or constantly-online mediums, shields his own children regardless of whether they are 13 or 16.

Mosseri also described the digital boundaries in their home during the interview. His children accumulate screen time for the weekend in exchange for fully completing their homework on weekdays. This time is at most 90 minutes. Flexibility is shown to the children only on long journeys by plane or vehicle.

It sounds familiar. Everyone knows that this type of parenting is a tradition in Silicon Valley, and that senior executives either keep their children away from the internet environment of every kind or strictly restrict it.

It is no longer a secret that senior executives of the Silicon Valley companies in question send their children to Waldorf schools, where technology is almost nowhere to be seen. Children educated in these schools develop their mental, emotional, physical, and artistic aspects together.

In other words, the communication and technology geniuses who develop and grow social media mediums and grow rich from advertising revenue do not let these applications cross the threshold of their homes.

Meanwhile, these people, who are overly sensitive and meticulous for their own children, are being tried in lawsuits filed in numerous states of America on charges of making other people's children "addicted."

Mosseri also testified last month in the addiction lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of four states against Meta. Mosseri is accused of Instagram and Facebook being specially designed to "attract, engage, and trap" young people, and of hiding their effects from people as an executive.

Interestingly, this overly sensitive father, who sets a maximum of 30 minutes of screen time on weekdays for his own children, argued that scrolling on Instagram for sixteen hours a day "should not count as addiction."

It also emerged in these hearings that the "age verification" that platforms, especially Instagram, force users to do when opening an account actually has no real effect. Because Mosseri says they are "aware" that users lie about their ages. There is a detail in this confession that should horrify us. In this case, a 13-year-old child can message with adults and access videos containing violence/sexuality by entering their birth year as 18 or over. In other words, the default settings of the mediums not only fail to provide oversight, but also open the way for access to illegal content.

According to research published by RTÜK, the screen time of children aged 6-13 in Türkiye is an average of 6.4 hours a day. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the World Health Organization recommend a maximum of 1-2 hours a day for children aged 6-12, and under 2 hours of screen time for ages 13-17. In fact, we are making the children of our country undergo the "social laboratory experiment" that the Silicon Valley bosses keep their own children away from, with our own hands.

As I finish, I will ask three painful questions:

Do you think Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, does not trust his children, or the content on the platform he runs?

And have we ever questioned the reason for this boundless trust we place in our children?

Or is it because we are so "addicted" that we are losing our parenting abilities, that we cannot see the bottomless pit our children have fallen into?