Understanding Instagram's Terms of Service: A Lawyer's Perspective
Instagram, one of the most popular social media platforms, has an intricate and complex terms of service agreement that every user needs to accept before using the platform. However, these terms can be extremely hard to understand for the average user, let alone younger audiences who also frequent the platform. A 2017 report called “Growing Up Digital” highlighted that essentially no children understood what they agreed to when signing up for Instagram. The terms of service, spanning 17 pages with 5,000 words, can be quite overwhelming for both kids and adults alike.
A Lawyer Simplifies the Terms
To address this issue, Jenny Afia, a privacy law expert at UK-based law firm Schillings, took it upon herself to simplify Instagram's terms of service for a younger audience. This was part of the “Growing Up Digital” report, and her version of the terms was written in language that children could understand. The revised version emphasized a few crucial points:
Instagram technically lets you own your original pictures and videos, but it also reserves the right to use them and let others use them worldwide. In some cases, Instagram may even get paid for allowing others to use your content, but you won't receive any compensation. Instagram may collect, use, and share your personal information with affiliated companies. This information can include your name, email address, school, location, pictures, phone number, your likes and dislikes, where you go, who your friends are, how often you use Instagram, and even your private messages. Instagram can send you advertisements related to your interests, which it monitors. You can't stop Instagram from doing this, and it won't always be clear that you're seeing an advertisement. Instagram reserves the right to change or end its services or block your access at any time, for any reason, without prior notice. It can also delete posts and other content randomly without telling you. If this happens, Instagram will not be responsible for paying out any money, and you won't have any right to complain. Instagram can force you to give up your username for any reason. Instagram can, but doesn't have to, remove, edit, block, and/or monitor anything posted or any accounts that it thinks break any of the platform's rules. If you break the rules, you're responsible, but Instagram is not responsible if someone else breaks the law or these rules.
The Impact and Implications
This simplified version of the terms was met with surprise from users. One 13-year-old girl commented that if the terms were easier to understand, people might think twice about using the app. Interestingly, it's not just kids who struggle to understand the terms. The report revealed that only people with postgraduate levels of education could fully comprehend Instagram's terms and conditions.
Afia believes that once people are more aware of what they're giving up, they might demand better terms. However, she also points out that most users aren't aware of what's being done with their data, so there's not a lot of pushback against these practices.
What Can Parents Do?
Parents have a key role to play in educating their children about these terms. The simplified privacy policy can be a good starting point for parents to discuss what their children are consenting to when using apps like Instagram. Parents can also find out what information companies have about their children and who they're sharing it with. However, few parents take advantage of this right.
There are several resources that parents can use to help guide their children's internet use:
The UK Safer Internet Centre has a “guide to technology” for parents. Net Aware offers a guide to popular apps that children use and rates them on their privacypolicy, among other things. The American Pediatric Family Media Plan provides a tool for planning children’s online time and other activities.
Policy Recommendations
The “Growing Up Digital” report also made three policy recommendations:
Create a compulsory “digital citizenship” program for children aged 4 to 14. This program wouldn't focus on coding and algorithms, which are currently taught, but on how to protect your rights online, how to respect others' rights, and how to manage online engagement. Implement the UK’s General Data Protection Regulation by writing terms and conditions in a way that children can understand. Create a new Children's Digital Ombudsman to liaise between parents and social media companies. These are ambitious proposals, and it remains to be seen how they would be implemented in practice. However, they highlight the importance of educating both children and adults about their digital rights and the implications of accepting terms and conditions online.
Overall, the issue of understanding terms of service agreements, especially for children, is a complex one that requires multi-faceted solutions involving education, policy changes, and increased transparency from social media companies.
Sources:
https://tribune.com.pk/story/1288840/lawyer-simplifies-instagram-terms-conditions-young
https://petapixel.com/2017/01/09/lawyer-rewrote-instagrams-terms-use-kids-can-understand/
https://www.denverpost.com/2017/01/09/instagrams-terms-of-use-plain-english/