Reform of social media, click by click

The $18 billion settlement between Meta Platforms and 48 states announced last week involves a good deal of money as well as technological tweaks to limit the exposure of users under 18 years of age to 24/7 social media feeds. Supporters see it as a major step forward; critics, as the Monitor reported Thursday, say it doesn’t go far enough.Those differing responses, paradoxically, hint at an underlying confluence of viewpoints – that safeguarding the growth and development of children and teenagers is not a one-and-done deal, left to individual court cases or settlements. Rather, balancing the economic drive of private innovation against its potential excesses is a whole-of-society effort. In other words, it takes the full range of individuals and institutions that constitute civil society: parents and children and families; educators and students and schools; lawmakers and regulators; the public sector and private corporations; and not least of all, those who work for and lead today’s cutting-edge technology firms.In the Aug. 26 agreement ending a court case, Meta did not accept culpability for features that the prosecution, as well as former employees, alleged are designed to target and hook younger users of Facebook and Instagram. But it did agree to institute measures such as setting default time limits on daytime use (two hours), blocking those apps from midnight to 6 a.m., and blocking notifications during the school day for accounts owned by young people. These restrictions would require parental permission to be altered.“These are straightforward changes that have long been needed,” according to Jonathan Turley, a professor of public interest law at George Washington University, who believes they “will assist parents.” But, in an Aug. 26 article on the Fox News website, he added a note of caution.“Social media remains one of the most transformative inventions in history, including as a powerful tool for free speech and political discourse,” Professor Turley observed, calling it “a technology that is both liberating and captivating.”Managing that tension, he indicated, demands individual agency and attentiveness, especially among the adults responsible for children’s well-being.Some countries, starting with Australia last year, are imposing outright bans on social media access by those below age 15 or 16. While delaying exposure to online dangers might help, equipping young people with the tools and knowledge to better handle those challenges is vital. Part of that skill is developed through understanding how social media algorithms work. But it’s also absorbed through what children and teens see adults doing.“Parents’ own [online] video viewing habits can influence their children,” Time magazine wrote two years ago, “and if parents practice what they preach – limiting screen time and being selective about what they watch – their children often adopt those patterns as well.”The alertness of adults (parents and lawmakers) as well as more mature teens to private sector accountability helps. Such vigilance and concerted action spurred self-regulation in movies and television decades ago. This includes a movie age-rating system that has been adjusted over the years, but is still seen as reliable today, and the limiting of advertising time and content in children’s TV programming. In the 1990s, video game producers introduced the M (mature) rating for violent games, which reduced access to those below 16 years old from 85% to 42% in just five years. However, studies have found that the alcohol industry has often violated its own marketing codes when it comes to targeting youth.Perhaps the lesson from last week’s settlement and previous efforts to limit the potential harms of certain industries is that one-dimensional approaches are not enough. Vigilance, transparency, and negotiated compromise among a range of players can help society move closer to that goal.