The settlement between Meta and most states, including Arizona, announced last month will lead to the company paying $17 billion to the states over a decade and making changes the states say will make kids safer on Meta platforms, including Instagram and Facebook.
Among the changes the tech giant will make: a time limit of two hours for kids younger than 18, a ban on showing the number of likes a post gets from other minors and nighttime and school-day blocks on notifications.
The social media giant also agreed to make sweeping changes to Instagram and Facebook.
But Kathryn Modecki doesn’t think those changes will really have the desired effect.
Modecki is a professor at the Kids Research Institute Australia and the University of Western Australia. She acknowledges the efforts of those who worked to make the settlement happen, but isn’t sure it’ll end up making Meta accountable.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Kathryn, do we actually know what we’re hoping for when it comes to kids and social media?
KATHRYN MODECKI: It’s so nice to hear that question being phrased that way, because I don’t know that that is how the zeitgeist is sort of framing this, and this is what’s so challenging. So if you think about sort of the celebratory response that you can see around the settlement, sort of like we’re going to make young people safe, right?
And this is based on, to some degree, this assumption that just being on social media is linked to poor mental health. So that is not what the science says. The science tells us that the effects are null to very small, and they can go in either direction, positive or negative. Time itself, in particular, is not a good metric for this. But — and that there are some benefits for certain young people, they cope, they find social connection, they find identity.
And at the same time, all of these things are true, there are harms on social media, and those harms tend to, we believe, be found particularly for kids already at risk. So if you look at it from that way, and then look at sort of these cosmetic — I’m going to call them cosmetic-level changes being addressed, it’s hard to see how that’s actually going to change the things we’re worried about.
MARK BRODIE: Well, so when you talk about time not necessarily being a good predictor of what the effects on kids will be of being on social media, you obviously are working in Australia, which has banned social media for kids. Does that not seem like the right approach then, either?
KATHRYN MODECKI: Well, you know, if we step back and say: What’s our goal? And if our goal is to make social media use safer, right, reduce perceived harm that is happening for kids, if we step back and said that’s our goal … we could argue, and I would argue, that the goal should be: A, to make this cleaner for everyone, not just whether you’re under 16 or under 18, but for everyone, right? And then let’s talk about this content that is getting pushed through that social media companies have ultimate authority over this.
None of these two responses — whether you’re talking about the social media ban or you’re talking about this lawsuit — … they’re not dealing with that. They’re sort of saying, “We think this is a risky pool, we’re going to sort of try and put this boundary around it and that’ll hopefully sort it.” As opposed to saying, “Wait a minute, we’re all swimming in this pool, why are we allowing it to be full of muck?”
MARK BRODIE: Well, it kind of sounds like what you’re saying is we’re basically saying to kids with this Meta settlement that, “OK, here’s something that’s really bad for you. We’re going to still allow you to do that thing that’s really bad for you, but for less time.” And thinking, OK, well that’s going to solve all the problems, as opposed to trying to make the thing itself less bad.
KATHRYN MODECKI: Yes, but let me sort of augment, but say it’s not necessarily really bad for you. … So on a whole, for lots of kids, it’s not bad, and but for other kids it is. And for those kids who are most at risk, those are going to be the kids least likely to have a parent that’s going to somehow come in and figure out … these controls that are being put in, opt in, opt out.
So if you were to ask me, what would I in an ideal world see? These wouldn’t be sort of opt-out features, right? But it would also be about what kids are being exposed to. So let me give you an example, sleep. So our research shows, other people’s research shows, late-night phone use is reduced, late-night, you know, poor sleep, which leads to sort of raising concerns around mental health. So that’s a sleep issue. So we can already go on to a phone and make changes about when our child can be on that phone. We can take a phone out of the room. And so it’s fairly cosmetic to say two hours, you know, at a time or can’t use the phone at night. That’s a cosmetic-level change for Meta, as opposed to saying, “Well, what are the features that makes anyone, including a young person, want to stay up and scroll for hours, right?”
And that would actually be helpful for everyone. And so across sort of each of these things, you see that they’re sort of saying they’re going to do, you know, I’ve said it in a Nature interview, I’ll say it here: To my mind, Meta is defining what the harm is, saying how they’re going to fix this supposed harm, right? And yet the underlying issues aren’t being addressed.
MARK BRODIE: Do you have any reason to think that some of those underlying issues will be addressed by social media companies? Like, can you envision a scenario where they would try to, you know, moderate some of the content or change the algorithms? It seems like if anything, they’re going in the other direction.
KATHRYN MODECKI: That’s a very good point. So you’re right, like content moderation, you know, has gone down and things of that sort. So the way I could see that happening is if we think of any other business model, so, you know, you can tell from my accent, I’m from the U.S. You know, think of another company or another area of business where we allow them to define the harm. We allow them to define the risk. We allow them to sort of decide on the solution, and they’re the ones who then verify that they’ve made that effort.
So when you look at this, this Meta settlement, they just have to show they’ve put this effort in. They don’t have to show that it’s worked in any way. So I think, yes, I can envision it if we sort of flip the script here a bit and said, “Wait a minute, why are the companies dictating these terms?” You know, in an ideal world, why don’t we have a third-party purveyor or organization who’s determining that these features are safe before they’re allowed to be deployed?
MARK BRODIE: Well, so I guess then, in the near term then, is it just kind of on parents to try to be on this as much as they can be?
KATHRYN MODECKI: This is the problem. So, you know, if we look at Meta, we’ve now left it to caretakers and parents to sort of figure out the features that are now being offered to them — which again are not the features that as researchers we would be putting forward by any means, right? And determine if they’re going to be helpful or harmful to their child, as opposed to the company itself doing this.
So, yes, I mean, again, I’ve reviewed over 200 studies with my colleagues across the board internationally, across socioeconomic status, different families. And it’s so important to realize that families are so diverse, they have so many stressors in their life, financial and otherwise. They have access to sort of different understanding about the digital space, and so you just, you know, hit the nail on the head. The idea that we’re laying this on caregivers and parents to figure out and somehow be their protectors and mediate this is hugely problematic.
MARK BRODIE: Well, I guess the other issue to consider here is that if there’s one thing that kids are good at, it’s finding ways to do things that they have specifically been told not to do, right?
KATHRYN MODECKI: Right. So that’s exactly. So I’m a developmental psychologist, I study adolescence, I have for 15 years, we actually stream data directly from young people’s phones, and this is what makes it complicated.
This is where we started learning about the ways young people make use of social media for coping with stress, for finding information, all of these beneficial ways. They’re clever. And to your point, part of adolescence is finding autonomy … it is defining yourself outside of your parental rules, that is normal, that is normative.
So, yes, we would absolutely expect it to be developmentally normative to do what we call workarounds often, right? And so to your point, you know, the reality of adolescence mandate, the reality of what parents’ experiences and their capacity, it is hard to see this effort making a meaningful difference in terms of reducing the risks that we’ve been concerned about.
MARK BRODIE: All right. That is Kathryn Modecki, a professor at the Kids Research Institute Australia and the University of Western Australia. Kathryn, thanks so much for the conversation. I appreciate it.
KATHRYN MODECKI: Thanks, Mark.
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