Instagram head Adam Mosseri said Wednesday that he wants a self-regulatory body to be created for the social media industry in order to determine best practices for how to keep children safe online amid intense scrutiny about the mental health of teenagers on his platform.

During a Senate hearing on the impact of Instagram on young users, his first appearance before Congress, Mosseri expressed support for an industry body to help determine how to verify children's ages accurately, how to build age-appropriate experiences, and how to build parental controls.

"This is an industrywide challenge that requires industrywide solutions and industrywide standards," Mosseri said.

A bipartisan group of senators announced earlier this month that it will launch an investigation into Instagram and its parent company, Meta, after a report emerged that the technology giant knew its platform could be "toxic" for some young users.

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Mosseri said the proposed industry body should take input from parents, civil society groups, and government regulators to build new standards for social media platforms.

Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and others on the Senate Commerce Committee pushed back against Mosseri, saying that a self-regulated industry body was a non-starter and would not be effective at solving the issues faced by children on Instagram.

Blumenthal tried to get Mosseri to agree to an independent standards body that is not industry-led, but he did not commit to doing so.

The platform announced in September that it has paused plans for its Instagram Kids app amid growing opposition to the project from parents and politicians.

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Instagram said in September that it wants to proceed with the new children's app eventually but wants to undertake more due diligence before doing so.