The push to protect children from social media\u2019s harms is gaining momentum globally and beginning to reach Big Tech\u2019s home turf.<\/p>\n
A groundbreaking Los Angeles jury verdict last week found Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.\u2019s Google negligent in the design and operation of their popular platforms \u2014 saying they harmed a young user with products created to be addictive. Now, several states including California are getting serious about potential regulation to limit young people on social media, following a trend that\u2019s accelerated in recent months around the world. <\/p>\n
Australia kicked off the global push, forcing the companies along with TikTok Inc., Snap Inc. and Elon Musk\u2019s X to boot Australian users under 16 off their platforms in December. The movement has since gained traction with Indonesia, parts of India, the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, Mexico, Canada and others discussing bans. Austria said on Friday it aims to pass legislation to curb social media use this year, Denmark has already agreed to similar restrictions, and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has said the sites\u2019 mental health damage to children is \u201cunambiguous.\u201d<\/p>\n
The result is a patchwork of proposals that range from outright bans for younger teenagers, like in Australia\u2019s regime, to requiring parental approval or oversight, like in Brazil and Portugal. Different countries have different ideas about which technology companies should be covered and regulators are grappling with a spectrum of ways that teenagers can connect and share content online. Such varied approaches across so many jurisdictions will make tech companies\u2019 compliance more complex.<\/p>\n
\u201cParents around the world are really understanding the nefarious impact that social media is having on their kids\u2019 mental health and their physical safety,\u201d said Matthew Bergman, founding attorney of the Seattle-based Social Media Victims Law Center, which represented the plaintiff in the L.A. case.<\/p>\n
He said governments or states imposing social media age regulations can work in a complimentary manner to the legal path his organization is taking to hold the companies accountable for their actions. <\/p>\n
Young people are important to Big Tech because they are building habits, he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not dissimilar to cigarette companies,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you can get them hooked in their teens, they will be lifetime customers throughout.\u201d<\/p>\n
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has started saying that he, too, wants to restrict access for those under 16, even though his state is home to Instagram, Google\u2019s YouTube and Snapchat. The platforms face thousands of product liability lawsuits in the US, and attorneys general in about 30 states are also suing the firms. The companies could face tens of billions of dollars in liability, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.<\/p>\n
The addiction verdict spoke to the core of what makes the networks popular and lucrative: their algorithms, personalized recommendations and infinite scroll, and increasing global regulations could affect how the services are designed. It followed a New Mexico jury\u2019s determination that Meta misled teenagers there about the safety of its social networks, awarding civil penalties totaling $375 million.<\/p>\n
Meta and Google said they disagree with the L.A. addiction verdict and plan to appeal. Meta also plans to appeal in New Mexico.<\/p>\n
Still, the evidence for how effective the bans are is mixed. Three months after Australia\u2019s took effect, many children are circumventing age verification systems or using virtual private networks to access social media. Many parents in the country welcome the ban, though others say it\u2019s pointless to try to take services away from teens who have been using them for years.<\/p>\n
The most pressing threat from the bans, analysts and industry insiders say, is that chipping away at their young user bases may deprive social media platforms of their future audience. Users may start to abandon social platforms or use them less frequently as they age. And if fewer young people sign up to replace them, the network effect that makes the services attractive diminishes. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe threat is building to Meta, Snap and TikTok from the erosion of the pipeline of younger users critical to lifetime-value projections, with European efforts to ban social media for teens set to be super-charged\u201d after the L.A. verdict, wrote Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Tamlin Bason.<\/p>\n
The platforms recognize that adding age verification procedures slows down new user acquisition, stifling growth, said one former platform executive, asking not to be identified. There is a significant negative impact for signups, the person said. Such restrictions also require knowing users\u2019 ages, which is not an exact science and can require more information from people. Holding more personal information comes with potential privacy risks.<\/p>\n
Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg testified that teens make up just 1% of company revenue. Still, populous emerging markets weighing bans represent some of the largest social media user bases \u2014 and the biggest potential pools of new users. North America and Europe typically represent Big Tech\u2019s most lucrative geographies, where average revenues per user are among the world\u2019s highest. <\/p>\n
The U.S. court victories have added momentum to the accountability movement, and even some of those in the industry are joining the chorus. Pinterest Inc. Chief Executive Bill Ready said social media \u201cas currently configured isn\u2019t safe for users under 16 \u2014 both here in the US and around the globe.\u201d In 2023, the San Francisco-based visual search and discovery service made accounts for under-16s private. He said social media \u2014 at least the way his larger rivals operate \u2014 risks becoming the next \u201cBig Tobacco.\u201d The L.A. verdict is \u201ca wake-up call: the industry must step up now with real safeguards for young people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cA group of ordinary American citizens did what U.S. regulators have so far failed to do\u201d in holding Big Tech responsible in the recent U.S. cases, Joanne Gray, chair of discipline for media and communications at the University of Sydney, said of the verdict. \u201cFor politicians who are interested in addressing the ongoing issues and harms presented by social media, it should help support a more aggressive political agenda,\u201d she said, though free speech protections may shield the companies.<\/p>\n
Many platforms stress that they have strong safeguards for children already in place, and that bans may encourage children to visit more dangerous corners of the internet. Meta, Google and X didn\u2019t respond to requests for comment on the proliferation of age restrictions globally or the likelihood of such rules coming to the U.S. \u201cWe believe that banning minors is a bad idea. Something needs to be done, but banning them is not the right solution, especially when we look at the Australian example,\u201d said Jean Goni\u00e9, senior director of EMEA Public Policy at Snap. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe will enforce the law, whatever it may be. We want this regulation to not create other problems, and to be truly enforced,\u201d said Gaultier Brand-Gazeau, head of public affairs for TikTok France, speaking about proposed French rules. TikTok already has age estimation tools and restrictions. It removes 25 million users per quarter globally for breaching them, he said.<\/p>\n
Meta rolled out \u201cteen accounts\u201d for Instagram in 2024, limiting who can follow and interact with younger users and restricting those customers from seeing sensitive content. Users who tell X that they\u2019re under 18 years old default to a \u201cprotected posts\u201d setting, which gives teenagers more control about who can follow them and see their content, the company said on its website. <\/p>\n
\u201cAge limits are spreading because they are popular amongst parents globally who are tired of fighting with kids about being on their phones too much,\u201d said Ravi Iyer, who led research, data science and product teams at Meta, later contributing to Jonathan Haidt\u2019s bestselling book about social media\u2019s impact, The Anxious Generation. \u201cMany kids also feel like they are on their phones too much,\u201d said Iyer, who is now managing director of the University of Southern California Marshall School\u2019s Neely Center. \u201cSo it makes for a truly bipartisan, popular issue\u201d globally.<\/p>\n
In France, President Emmanuel Macron has made a proposed social media ban for children under 15 one of his key priorities, with hopes it will be in effect in September. \u201cThis ban is not perfect, it is not the ideal solution, but it is the only one we have to try to protect our youth,\u201d said Laure Miller, a lawmaker from Macron\u2019s party. <\/p>\n
The Los Angeles verdict provides a \u201cvery clear message that online platforms have to take seriously the risks that they are posing,\u201d the European Union\u2019s top technology official, Executive Vice President Henna Virkkunen, said Thursday. The commission that day announced it has opened an investigation into how Snapchat verifies its users\u2019 ages and other issues. <\/p>\n
Platforms won many of their U.S. court fights in prior years because of a law that protects them from liability for content posted by their users. But the California lawsuit focused on product liability, arguing the companies had intentionally designed services that are addictive. \u201cTheir shield is gone,\u201d Haidt wrote on LinkedIn on Wednesday following the verdict.<\/p>\n
Purnell writes for Bloomberg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The push to protect children from social media\u2019s harms is gaining momentum globally and beginning to reach Big…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[154],"tags":[3902,3903,817,3029,1020,3907,812,618,994,3904,3909,3906,311,3905,107,3908],"class_list":["post-3084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mark-zuckerberg","tag-australian-user","tag-ban","tag-big-tech","tag-child","tag-company","tag-content","tag-google","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-meta","tag-platform","tag-service","tag-several-state","tag-social-medium","tag-teen-user","tag-us","tag-young-people"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116332572395255918","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}