Meta has reached a landmark settlement in the United States of America, agreeing to pay nearly $18 billion in penalties and make major changes to its platforms. The penalties are for violating child privacy and endangering children with addictive social media platforms. As part of the settlement, Meta has agreed to limit how long teenagers can spend on its platforms, a concession that strikes at the heart of the company’s business model of maximising user engagement to increase advertising revenue. The tech giant’s capitulation is heartening because several studies have pointed out that social media can be like quicksand for youngsters. The Pew Research Center found that about one-third of American teenagers used leading platforms almost constantly, and a former Meta safety engineer reported that 51% of teenage Instagram users surveyed had experienced harm online, with the offending content being removed in merely 0.02% of cases. A study commissioned by Facebook itself revealed that 13.5% of British girls reported their suicidal thoughts intensifying upon using Instagram. The settlement thus rightly holds Meta accountable for products that exposed young users to harm.
Some of the steps that Meta must now take include a default two-hour daily limit for users under 18, silenced notifications during school hours, interruptions in continuous scrolling, strengthening age verification and expanding parental supervision. But these safety features are still rudimentary. Teenagers can still easily circumvent age checks by entering false birth dates, using adults’ credentials and so on. Moreover, targeted advertising, private messaging and several compulsive design features remain largely untouched. Critics have also pointed out that Meta may actually benefit from settling: it avoided an indicting judgment and part of its payment is conditional on TikTok, YouTube and other rivals accepting comparable obligations that will affect their earnings. Even so, the settlement can establish a basic template for firmer global action without restricting youth’s access to useful information and expression. Comprehensive privacy and online-safety legislation targeted towards children — as has been passed in Australia — independent platform audits, transparent risk assessments, strict limits on children’s data collection, digital-literacy programmes and accessible mental-health support are some of the ways in which children can be kept safer online.
————————————————
