The UK health secretary has called on social media giants to do more to tackle sexting among the nation鈥檚 teens, which he blames for rising cases of mental illness. Yet his proposals for smart locks that aim to prevent bullying and stop teenagers sharing sexually explicit images online are just the latest example of government demanding the tech sector come up with magical fixes to complex societal problems.
Giving evidence to the House of Commons health committee as part of an inquiry into , Jeremy Hunt singled out social media as a key platform for abuse, 鈥淚 ask myself the simple question as to why you can鈥檛 prevent the texting of sexually explicit images by people under the age of 18, if that鈥檚 a lock that parents choose to put on a mobile phone contract.鈥� The health secretary added 鈥淚 ask myself why we can鈥檛 identify cyberbullying when it happens on social media platforms by word pattern recognition, and then prevent it happening.鈥�
Hunt is no stranger to magical solutions. His tech proposals are easy to suggest, but much harder to achieve in reality. Simple artificial intelligence can flag abusive keywords and recognise explicit images, but these are crude tools that often fail to understand the context of these words and images, and more importantly, are easy to circumvent.
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Most practical filters, like those protecting the comments sections of a website, rely on feedback from thousands of viewers who can flag objectionable content. Not much use in a two-way chat dialogue 鈥� I鈥檓 guessing Hunt doesn鈥檛 want the crowd down-voting teen nudes. And similar content filters on Facebook have resulted in women having their accounts suspended for .
What is porn?
When even US Supreme Court judges have tried and failed to pin down what classifies as obscene, only concluding 鈥�,鈥� how can we build an AI that recognises pornography when we can鈥檛 do it ourselves?
Even if we could, we shouldn鈥檛. In the light of the pervasive powers granted by the Investigatory Powers Act and proposed by the Digital Economy Bill, we should be wary of building yet more infrastructure to filter the internet.
鈥淲hat Hunt is proposing is real-time processing of every image shared digitally,鈥� says at Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK. 鈥淪uddenly the capability is there to not just look at porn, but what is shared at specific locations, or things someone doesn鈥檛 want seen.鈥� Crick says there鈥檚 a massive risk of mission creep: 鈥淥nce the infrastructure exists, it鈥檚 very easily repurposeable.鈥�
Hunt鈥檚 plea will play well with concerned parents, but Crick, who has been working to reform UK computer education, views tighter controls as not just technically unfeasible, but strategically wrong. 鈥淲e鈥檙e trying to create competent and capable young people who can confidently navigate the internet,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ut suddenly we see this paternalistic approach of protecting them from the internet by simply closing it down.鈥�
Filters are hackable
Just as children invariably find their way around internet filters at school, blocking certain types of content on social networks will invariably shift teens鈥� activity onto different, less regulated services. Crick says that while protecting children online is clearly desirable, it鈥檚 less obvious where the responsibility lies: 鈥淚f your child is aged under 12, should they have unsupervised access to the internet?鈥�
The health secretary鈥檚 comments betray our own uneasiness about sexual awareness in young teens. There鈥檚 no doubt that we鈥檙e seeing a dramatic change in norms around sex and sharing sexual content, which comes hand in hand with the potential for abuse through revenge porn and extortion. But sexting isn鈥檛 about to go away, and demanding that social media companies block explicit images refuses to engage with how teens 鈥� and the rest of us 鈥� use the internet.
If the minister really wants to tackle problems around sexual activity and mental health in young people, he ought to spend less time demanding magical fixes from Silicon Valley and more time ensuring Britain鈥檚 youth have access to high quality sexual education and well-funded mental health services.
