Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Thursday, December 9th. I'm Nila Boudou.

Here's what we're watching today, creating a haven for abortions in California, plus a

new zero-carbon emissions goal for the federal government. But first, today's one big thing.

Instagram on the defense over teen mental health.

The head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, came to Capitol Hill yesterday with a message for

senators. His company could and will do better protecting teens. He was defending the social

media app from a growing bipartisan backlash over its reported harmful impact on teens,

especially young girls. Axios' technology reporter Margaret Harding McGill listened

into the testimony, so we did not have to. Hi, Margaret. Hey, thank you for having me.

What's it out to you most about yesterday's hearing? Mosseri was pressed on Instagram for kids.

This idea that Instagram was working on a version of its app targeted at 10 to 12-year-olds,

and that had alarmed lawmakers, and he eventually agreed to pause it, but he would not agree

in the hearing to say it's paused permanently. And the other news I think that he made out of it

was that they're working on a version of the app that will allow users to see posts in chronological

order rather than being determined by the algorithm with the idea that this will give people more

control over their experience. One of the things that really stood out to me is some of the arguments

over age verification. That has to do with how these apps determine how old their users are,

and so what rules will apply to their experience. And Instagram says that it's very difficult for them

to determine the age of their users, but lawmakers are pretty skeptical because look at all the

information they collect on you to target ads. So the debate about age verification did not

carry a lot of water. There was a lot of talk throughout the hearing about adopting best practices.

What is Instagram promising here? Well, ahead of the hearing, they came with a bunch of changes

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