Meta is likely harming kids in Colorado and around the world
Every day, parents like me do the best they can to keep their children safe online. But whether we set time limits on smartphones, enable privacy settings or ban social media altogether in our homes, it feels like a losing battle when companies prioritize profits over the safety and wellbeing of children.
Late last year, former Meta security expert Arturo Bejar made headlines with a shocking account of negligence in Instagram’s approach to child safety and digital wellbeing. A parent himself, Bejar experienced these issues firsthand through his own teen daughter’s experiences of unwanted, sexualized communication from strangers on Instagram.
This comes on the heels of a lawsuit against Meta, filed by 42 states, for designing features on Facebook and Instagram that make their products addictive to kids and teens. Along with Bejar, the states suing Meta now know what organizations like Common Sense Media have been warning parents about for years: Social media platforms appear to be designed to keep kids engaged as long as possible to make as much profit as possible. And this can seriously undermine their mental health.
As a parent of a 10-year-old boy, I know how difficult it can be to draw my kids away from their devices. Last year, my son’s friends were all watching Youtube videos, and being that he wanted to fit in and be in their conversations, he started watching too. Before long, he got pulled into Youtube shorts, which are essentially like watching Tiktok or videos on Instagram. I don’t want him watching shorts and know that the constant dopamine hit it gives him messes with his brain. It is impossible to turn off the shorts feature on Youtube, so we dropped Youtube, leaving my son out of conversations with his friends who are still watching. Constantly watching shorts made him impatient and unable to stop. My son is not alone in this. A recent research study from Common Sense Media shows that while kids and teens rely on smartphones for communication and connection, they also acknowledge that the constant notifications and engaging design features make it harder for them to focus and even sleep.
While some kids and teens can manage their phone and social media use on their own, many fall prey to manipulative and harmful content like extreme dieting fads, illegal drugs, unsafe Tiktok challenges or suicide ideation. In the case of my child, he got hooked on Mr. Beast and other Youtube videos, like basketball trick shots and hide and seek. Seemingly harmless videos. However, one day he told me he needed money to buy an “abs machine.” I said “What? Where did that come from?” He pinched his (zero fat 10-year-old) belly and said he was a little “flabby” and needed the machine. I had to talk with him and explain how the commercials he was seeing on Youtube were not a match for our family values, nor true for him. That his body was exactly the way it was supposed to be and that the commercials might be affecting his selfimage. That there is no perfect body and it wasn’t healthy to try to attain it. It was a shock to me.
Why does parenting have to be so hard in the age of smartphones? Parents and kids should not be abandoned to navigate this dangerous digital landscape alone. Rather, it should be the responsibility of the companies to ensure they design their platforms with kids’ safety and wellbeing in mind.
This is why it is so important that Congress take action and pass the Kids Online Safety Act. The KOSA would give power and agency back to parents and kids, and away from dangerous tech giants. This bipartisan bill would require tech platforms to ensure their powerful algorithms are not promoting dangerous or harmful messages to minors, or deliberately trying to keep them engaged online. The bill also requires the strongest privacy settings for minor accounts on default, and provides safeguards against predatory strangers and data collectors. These tools could have saved my family a lot of heartache.
Congress has an opportunity to protect other families from experiencing the same pain, and our U.S. Senators can help protect our nation’s kids from online harms. Parents who agree with me, call Senator Bennet at 202-224-5852 and urge him to cosponsor the Kids Online Safety Act. Our kids can’t wait.
Robin Berg lives in Denver.