Families confronted Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg with pictures of their dead children, prompting an apology from the executive during a hearing in front of the US Congress on 31 January. The children had been sexually exploited or otherwise harmed through social media prior to their deaths.
鈥淵ou have blood on your hands,鈥� said Senator Lindsay Graham to executives from TikTok, Snap, Discord, Meta and X (formerly Twitter), who were being questioned about the dangers children face when using their products and what the companies are doing to protect the safety and privacy of young people online.
Without comprehensive federal laws, the US has struggled to implement through a patchwork of individual state laws that can be confusing even for parents and young people, says at the Brookings Institution, a think tank based in Washington DC. She questioned whether the latest Senate hearing would go beyond performative politics.
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鈥淭he American public does not need to see Congress interrogate tech companies again on the same issue,鈥� says Turner Lee. 鈥淎t this point we need to advance some type of legislative framework 鈥� if not for the entire country, at least for young people.鈥�
The revolved around efforts to drum up support for that have been introduced to prevent the exploitation of children online and reduce their exposure through social media to sexual exploitation and mental health harms. Experts say that US lawmakers must require tech companies to take responsibility for the online products and services used by millions of young people.
鈥淚n a world where [young people] are using anywhere from three to seven very different apps, it is not practical for parents to monitor their behaviour across all of them and keep up to date with the latest possible types of harm,鈥� says , former head of youth policy for Meta and an independent tech policy advisor.
She says parental controls can help tailor a child鈥檚 experience but aren鈥檛 a substitute for responsible product design. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 the remit of the companies that seek to engage, market to and profit from young people.鈥�
Leading social media platforms 鈥� including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X and YouTube 鈥� collectively earned almost from US users under the age of 18 in 2022. Meanwhile, a into parental controls has shown that they 鈥渟ometimes work, sometimes don鈥檛 work and sometimes make matters worse鈥�, says at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
There can also be drawbacks to intrusive parental controls that risk 鈥渟tripping young people of their privacy at a time when they need it the most to figure out who they are鈥�, says J. Tools that can filter and block a wide array of content may also become 鈥渨eaponised to disempower children鈥�, says Livingstone.
Livingstone says lawmakers should strike a balance between reducing online harms to children and preserving the privacy of young people while also giving them freedom to access information and express themselves. She pointed to the UK鈥檚 Online Safety Act, which became law in October, as a good attempt to regulate system design rather than content. Examples of this include banning so-called dark patterns, which are design elements in social media platforms that subtly nudge users to make certain choices.
