If you market music, you probably use one or more of Meta’s platforms to do it, and the target audience for that marketing will often include young people and teenagers. But now, there is a palpable momentum – in a societal and legal sense – behind actions designed to minimise what is being seen as the negative impact of social media on children during their crucial developmental stages of life.
Now, in the US, a New Mexico judge has ordered a new round of fines for Meta, on top of $375m that it was ordered to pay after a jury found Meta responsible for not protecting young users from danger online – and that its algorithms “steered” youngsters to damaging content and users. Now, it must pay another $567m for facilitating the harm that young users have experienced, deeming the platform a “public nuisance”.
That adds up to not only nearly a billion dollars in fines, but also to very bad optics for Meta.
The judge’s remarks were scathing: “Just as noxious pollution produced by the factory can harm the common public right to reasonably clean air, the harmful effects of Meta’s platforms on children do not stay contained by its platforms and, instead, migrate to the internet as a whole and, perhaps most concerning, to the real world and create a common, societal burden on and harm to the affected children and their families and schools, as well as hospitals and law enforcement.”
Meta must now also enable other restrictions – ones that some may be surprised to learn were not already in place: users under age 18 must now not have their account recommended to an adult; no adult can DM an underage user; underage users must not be able to send or receive nude images; and there must be a “1-strike policy for adult users who engage in child sexual exploitation.” There are other mandated restrictions around push notifications, usage limits and “like” counts, the BBC reports.
Meta issued a statement saying that it “remains confident in our record of protecting teens online,” and that it disagreed with the ruling and will appeal. Research shows that 56% of Americans support a social media ban for under-16s.
There is now a multi-wave of litigation in the US targeting social media companies over concerns around young people’s mental health. Next week, a trial involving a federal lawsuit, led by California’s Attorney General along with 33 other state attorneys general, begins against Meta. The lawsuit alleges that Meta, among other things, “designed and deployed harmful features on its platforms that addict children and teens to their severe mental and physical detriment, all the while misleading the public regarding the existence and severity of these risks.”
There is also a wave of action around the world. In April, France became the first EU country to ban social media access for under-15s. Since then, the European Commission has recommended a bloc-wide approach to how children access social media, in order to protect them from “predatory algorithms”. The UK is also looking to proceed with under-16 social media bans.
But the world is still in the early days of implementation and working out what is the best balance for society, health, and teenagers: in Australia, where a ban on teenage social media access has been in place since January, recent data has shown that most teenagers are still online.
SANDBOX GUIDE: We recently published a Sandbox Guide for marketers on embracing the youth social media bans – what the bans will mean for bands, brands and fans, and how it could even strengthen connection to communities.
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