U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg last week urging his company to shut down a new feature on Instagram allowing users to share their real-time location.
On Wednesday, Instagram rolled out its new map feature, which the platform describes as a tool helping “users connect with friends and explore location-based content.”
With the new map feature, Instagram users can choose to share their active location with selected mutual followers.
While users can opt out of sharing their own location, they can continue to explore the map to see Reels, posts, Stories, and Notes from other users, which are all tagged with locations.
Blackburn, along with U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), urged the feature to be shut down as they warn it can put children’s safety at risk.
The Instagram “map” feature is only the latest failure in a laundry list of things @Meta has done to put children in harm’s way. This new feature exposes our kids to traffickers and pedophiles.
They need to shut it down. pic.twitter.com/w60L2nNDRO
— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) August 11, 2025
Pointing to their work on the Kids Online Safety Act, the senators expressed their concerns with social media platforms allowing users to share their real-time location, writing, “[W]e again urge you to protect children’s safety instead of potentially exposing their location to dangerous individuals online, including pedophiles and traffickers.”
Despite Meta’s claim that the map feature is opt-in, the senators noted some users have reported their location was shared without consent, further criticizing the company for prioritizing profit over child safety.
“While Meta has argued that the feature is inactive unless users opt in to sharing their location, some consumers have reported that their location was automatically shared without their consent. This addition is a cause of particular concern for us when it comes to children and teens that are active on Instagram. Meta’s platforms have been consciously designed to prioritize profit over the protection of its most vulnerable users: our children,” the senators wrote.
Blackburn and Blumenthal claimed that Meta’s existing parental controls are inadequate and leave young users vulnerable to exploitation by predators.
“While Meta has argued that parents with supervision settings on their children’s accounts have control over their location settings, it is clear that existing parental controls are not sufficient. Meta has made it difficult for parents to fully understand or utilize parental controls, leading to abuse, exploitation, and victimization of these precious children,” they added.
The letter also points to Meta’s broader track record of failing to protect minors, citing incidents involving artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots engaging in explicit conversations with children and algorithms that promote inappropriate content.
Blackburn and Blumenthal argued that Instagram’s new map feature could make it easier for predators to locate children, given how “children often accept follow requests from individuals they do not know personally.”
“Allowing children to share their real time location and more readily displaying where they take pictures to strangers—many of whom may be pedophiles and traffickers—will only increase the dangers children face online due to your inaction. Your company has repeatedly shown that it will always fail to protect children’s lives,” the senators said.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
